Undercurrent | Potential Energy Coalition  |  Environment  |  May 21, 2026

Data centers are driving up electricity bills across Pennsylvania right now. Utility shutoffs rose 21% last year. Pennsylvania ratepayers are paying roughly a billion dollars more this year in generation costs directly attributed to data center load growth. In the last major PJM capacity auction, data centers were responsible for 63% of the price spike - approximately $9.3 billion in added costs passed to ratepayers across the 13-state grid. Pennsylvanians know it: 95% of likely voters support the principle that data centers, not households, should pay for their own power.

Virginia just ran the political argument that follows from those facts - and won. Governor Spanberger signed legislation this session deploying the data center cost-shift argument to advance clean energy rather than fossil fuels. The argument was tested, enacted, and is now law. Pennsylvania has a procurement window closing June 5 - two weeks from now - where the same argument should be loudest. It is not in the proceeding. The fossil-aligned framing is.

THE 30-SECOND READ

The signal:  Virginia built a three-part argument - data centers are driving up bills, clean energy is the cost solution, and ratepayers need explicit protection from data center cost-shifting - and won legislatively. Pennsylvania has the same factual base, documented polling support, and emerging regulatory infrastructure to run the same argument. It has a procurement window closing June 5 where the fossil-aligned framing is being institutionalized with no clean energy counter-deployment identified. New York is running both sides of the same argument simultaneously in its legislature right now, making it the live laboratory for how the contest unfolds when both sides engage.

Why it matters:  The affordability argument is not approaching - it is being decided now, through administrative and regulatory processes that do not look like narrative fights. The June 5 RFI close is not a vote or a hearing. It is the moment Pennsylvania’s energy urgency framing gets anchored to whichever fuel types responded - in a document co-signed by Governor Shapiro using Trump administration vocabulary - before the clean energy counter-argument has been deployed. The June PJM capacity auction, the first without a price cap, is the next moment the terrain resets across the 13-state grid regardless of what any narrative actor does.

The practical implication:  Virginia’s argument is available and enacted. Pennsylvania’s conditions are not identical - no RGGI revenue history, a legislature with a Republican Senate majority, a governor who traded RGGI away six months ago - but the adaptation path exists. The data center cost-shift principle has already been established in Pennsylvania through the PUC model tariff and the PPL rate case settlement. The polling-tested framing is documented. What is missing is deployment of that argument into the live window before June 5.

What to do with it:  Whether PEC’s message-development and testing process should be pointed at the Pennsylvania window before June 5, and at New York as the live laboratory where both sides are currently visible. Decision Memo below.

DECISION MEMO

1. Pennsylvania before June 5 - is the argument deployable in this window?

The RFI closes in two weeks. The fossil-aligned framing is in the official document. Virginia’s enacted legislation is the available proof-of-concept. Pennsylvania’s own regulatory record - the PUC model tariff, the PPL settlement, the Load Forecast Accountability Act - establishes the data center cost-shift principle in state proceedings. The polling is documented: 95% support data centers paying their own costs; 55% prefer clean energy over gas. What is missing is assembly of those pieces into the argument and deployment into the proceeding before June 5. Whether that is actionable given PEC’s internal picture is the question. The lever is frame-opening window.

2. New York - the live laboratory, frame still open

Both sides of the affordability frame contest are active and identifiable in New York simultaneously. The diversion bills (S09422, A10695, S04327) are the fossil-aligned deployment - redirect climate funds to utility bill relief, framing clean energy spending as the cause of high bills. The enacted clean energy tax extensions are the clean energy counter. This is the contest in real time, before it closes. Whether PEC’s testing process should be pointed at New York as the state where both sides are most visible is the relevant question.

3. PJM auction as timing boundary

The first PJM capacity auction without a price cap will generate new affordability numbers across the 13-state footprint independent of any actor’s decisions. The frame in place before the auction may not be the frame that performs after it. Whether PEC’s testing and positioning should be oriented to the pre-auction or post-auction environment - and on what version of the data center affordability argument - is the relevant timing decision.

THIS WEEK, IN ORDER OF URGENCY

1. Pennsylvania: the RFI closes June 5, the argument is available, the window is open.  Virginia built and won the clean energy affordability argument from the same factual base Pennsylvania has right now. The RFI closes in two weeks. No clean energy counter-deployment has been identified in the proceeding. Pennsylvania’s own regulatory record provides the building blocks. The question is whether the argument reaches the window before it closes.

2. New York: both sides of the argument are live simultaneously.  S09422, A10695, and S04327 would redirect climate funds to utility bill relief - the fossil-aligned framing made visible in legislative form. Clean energy tax extensions passed in the same session. The frame is being contested now, in a PEC-adjacent state, before it hardens.

3. Michigan: three fronts, one without a counter.  The May 8 ruling narrowed the legal track and freed the opposition to concentrate on legislative rollback, ballot, and procedural delay. The health frame is already in an official county health record - legally cognizable in MPSC proceedings - not pending the Silver Maple June 4 pre-hearing conference to get there.

4. The PJM auction: the frame resets regardless.  The first PJM capacity auction without a price cap will generate new affordability numbers across the 13-state footprint. The window before the auction is the window in which the frame is still being shaped.

DEEPER ANALYSIS

For those who want it.

Pennsylvania: the argument is available, the window closes June 5

Virginia built a three-part argument this session and won: data centers are driving up bills, clean energy is the cost solution not the problem, and ratepayers need explicit protection from data center cost-shifting. Governor Spanberger signed the package. It is now law. Pennsylvania has the same factual base, stronger in some respects. What it does not yet have is the argument deployed into the live window.

Data centers are already driving up Pennsylvania bills. Utility shutoffs rose 21% last year, according to PUC data cited by the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project. Pennsylvania ratepayers are paying approximately a billion dollars more this year in generation costs directly attributed to data center load growth. In the 2025/2026 PJM capacity auction, prices exploded nearly tenfold. Data centers were responsible for 63% of that spike -- roughly $9.3 billion -- according to Monitoring Analytics, PJM's independent market monitor. Pennsylvania is the fastest-growing data center market in the PJM region.

Pennsylvania voters have already reached the same conclusion Virginia voters reached before their legislature acted. An NRDC poll of likely 2026 Pennsylvania voters found 55% prefer clean energy over new gas plants to meet growing demand -- a 17-point margin. Ninety-five percent support the principle that data centers, not households, should pay for their own power. That is the highest-performing tested message in the poll. It is also the core of the argument Virginia enacted.

Pennsylvania has also begun building the regulatory infrastructure for the adaptation. The PUC issued a model large-load tariff framework in April 2026 establishing the cost causation principle. The PPL rate case settlement was the first time a Pennsylvania utility agreed to shield ratepayers from data center costs, including $11 million directed to low-income rate relief. The Load Forecast Accountability Act gives the PUC authority to validate utility load forecasts before they reach PJM.

What Pennsylvania does not have is RGGI. Virginia's RGGI revenue -- $800 million for low-income households during its prior participation -- was the most concrete household-level proof that clean energy policy produces affordability results. Pennsylvania exited RGGI in November 2025 as part of a budget deal. The adaptation path exists without it. The argument Pennsylvania can make from its own regulatory record: data centers are driving up your bills right now; Pennsylvania has already established the principle that data centers should pay their own costs; clean energy is the faster, cheaper generation answer to grid stress; gas locks in higher costs for longer. That argument has documented polling support and regulatory anchors. It does not require RGGI.

The proceeding where that argument should be loudest right now is the DEP EIT RFI. The document frames Pennsylvania's energy need around "energy independence," "lower energy costs," and the federal "Energy Dominance Financing Program" -- Trump administration vocabulary in a Shapiro-signed filing. The 250 MW minimum threshold structurally favors gas, nuclear, or large battery storage over wind and solar. No clean energy actor has been identified in the proceeding. The RFI closes June 5. After it closes, the framing is anchored to whatever responded.

New York: the live laboratory

Three bills -- S09422, A10695, S04327 -- would redirect climate funds to utility bill relief, making the explicit argument that clean energy spending is why bills are high. Clean energy tax extensions passed in the same session. A09086 and S06394 would prohibit data center fossil fuel PPAs -- the same grid stress argument routed toward clean energy rather than fossil generation. Both sides are named, in the record, at the same moment. That is what the contest looks like when both sides engage.

Michigan: the legal win did not end the campaign

The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld Public Act 233 on May 8. The ruling was a genuine win on the legal track. It was not a resolution of the campaign. Before the ruling, the opposition was concentrated in a single visible chokepoint. The ruling narrowed it and freed the coalition from it.

Three tracks are now active simultaneously: legislative rollback (HB5711, SB0322, SB0325, HB5837 -- Whitmer's veto caps the near-term risk, but the bills signal where opposition resources are going); ballot (Citizens for Local Choice suspended, not abandoned); and procedural delay within individual MPSC cases using two narrow reversal points the Court of Appeals ruling made available. The Michigan Townships Association has not responded publicly since the ruling. Their attorney said they are considering a Supreme Court appeal. The window runs through mid-July.

The health argument is already in the record

Last week's brief noted the health-concerns frame was approaching its first formal regulatory proceeding. That understated where it had reached. The St. Clair County Health Department filed formal memos citing EMF and contamination concerns through county medical official Dr. Remington Nevin. A county health official's memo is legally cognizable in MPSC proceedings in a way a yard sign is not. The health frame is already in an official record -- one that persists regardless of what happens at the Silver Maple June 4 hearing. No established counter-messaging exists for the government-official-endorsed version of the argument.

WHAT NOT TO MISREAD

• Pennsylvania’s conditions are not Virginia’s.  No RGGI revenue history. A Republican Senate majority. A governor who traded RGGI away in November. The frame is portable; the model is not a copy-paste. The adaptation path exists, but it requires building the argument from Pennsylvania’s own regulatory record rather than transplanting Virginia’s.

• The EIT RFI close is not a policy outcome.  It is a narrative anchoring event. The mechanism is fuel-agnostic; the framing is not. What closes June 5 is the window to shape the framing of the process - not the selection of a fuel type. Which projects will respond is not yet public.

• The NY diversion bills are not a clean energy defeat.  They are the opposition argument made visible in legislative form. Clean energy tax extensions passed in the same session. The frame is being contested, not lost.

• The Michigan ruling did not settle the opposition.  One track narrowed. Three opened. The coalition has not dispersed; it has redistributed. The health frame is advancing on a trajectory that does not depend on the legal or legislative outcome.

• The rollback bills are not the Michigan story.  Whitmer’s veto caps the immediate legislative risk. The health frame and procedural tracks are the ones without a cap.

• The cross-state opposition pattern is not confirmed coordination.  The same vocabulary is operating through different institutional channels in MI and NY. Countering one channel does not counter the others - the mechanisms are different.

METHOD / COVERAGE NOTE

Sources for verified statistics: 21% utility shutoff increase - Pennsylvania PUC terminations data, cited by PA Utility Law Project executive director Elizabeth Marx in May 2026 regulatory proceedings (Allegheny Front / WHYY, May 4, 2026). ~$1 billion in added generation costs - same source and speaker. 63% of PJM price spike attributable to data centers / $9.3 billion - Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s independent market monitor, cited by Kleinman Center for Energy Policy (University of Pennsylvania), January 2026. 55% Pennsylvania voter preference for clean energy over gas; 95% support for data center cost principle - NRDC / Global Strategy Group poll, 600 likely 2026 Pennsylvania voters, February 2026. Virginia electricity bills up 30% since 2021; three-quarters of Virginia voters blamed data centers - National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, April 2026.

Undercurrent’s coverage is strongest where signals are visible through public filings, legislative records, and regulatory proceedings. The Virginia counter-frame gap in Pennsylvania reflects what is visible in public proceedings - an absence-of-evidence signal, not a confirmed mapping of the full field. The soil reclassification mechanism cited in the cross-state opposition section is sourced from an advocacy-adjacent opposition blog and requires independent verification. Coverage is weaker where relevance depends on private partner activity or actor behavior between public moments.

Undercurrent.is - Potential Energy Coalition - May 21, 2026