How data centers are changing the ECD and energy infrastructure conversation

Fifty months after President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law, it’s clear that upgrading the United States’ roads, bridges, fiber, water systems, electric grid and other infrastructure elements remains a very heavy lift. See: Lawmakers’ efforts to streamline all kinds of permitting processes and President Donald Trump’s recent talk of requiring data-center operators to fund electricity expansions in a big chunk of the country.

At the recent Goldman Sachs Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference, those data centers emerged as a topic of conversation during analysts’ conversation with Nick Dell’Osso, CEO of natural gas producer Expand Energy Corp. Dell’Osso is a big producer in the Marcellus basin that stretches from western Virginia into New York. But getting natural gas from that area into major Northeastern markets has been a thorn in the energy sector’s side for a while because pipeline additions and expansions and other new infrastructure projects have frequently run into snags.

Is that situation getting better, Goldman’s Ati Modak asked Dell’Osso. The CEO’s answer covered a lot more ground than some gas pipelines. Here’s most of it:

“Let’s say you have a recognition of the demand that is unmet for energy throughout the country today. And that really shows up in the Northeast, where you have much higher energy prices than you have in the rest of the country for no good reason. You have proximity to supply that should give the Northeast quite an advantage and we just don’t see it show up.

You are seeing a very slight change in the sentiment around infrastructure and around what it means to have affordable energy in all parts of the country. A big part of that comes from the fact that you have very large companies that, historically, the Northeast part of the United States has viewed as good neighbors, good local partners. If you think about the city of Boston being a tech hub and you think about Amazon and you think about Google and you think about companies like this that have had significant investments in markets like Massachusetts and the Northeast for a long time, those companies are absolutely not talking about building data centers in those regions.

And if you’re a governor in one of those states, you’re realizing that Ohio is crushing you, Texas is crushing you, Louisiana is crushing you. And these are real investments for high-tech, really good jobs and a great tax base.

More importantly, [those jobs] are going to other parts of the country and your citizens are mad about it. You’re mad about it. And that is driving a change in the view of what it means to have access to affordable energy. And so I think that’s really productive. I think that’s really healthy.”

When it comes to the geography of U.S. GDP growth, we’ll be paying a lot more attention in 2026 to this dynamic. Election-year considerations and all that, you know.