October 14, 2025
How Effective Government Policy Can Further Extend the US Lead in Data Center Development
The Race to AI Infrastructure
The U.S. is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence (AI). While it leads with ~80% of AI-driven data center capacity installed domestically by 2024, key bottlenecks in power generation, grid congestion, and ecosystem coordination threaten to slow progress and open the door for global competitors.
How the Public & Private Sectors Can Help
There are several ways the race to ready can be further accelerated by state and federal actions beyond the efforts already underway:
Federal:
- Further reforms to the interconnection queue process
- Creation of ecosystem portal
- Further transparency in the federal land use selection process
- A more proactive federal grants and lending process
State:
- Communicating state-level AI strategy and roadmap
- State-level interconnection que process reform
- Inventory state of utilities and strategize high priority upgrades
- Opening state lands for data center development
- Crafting private/public partnership models (P3s)
- Investing in behind-the-meter “bridges” to power
Private:
- Creating consortia to pool highly fragmented ecosystem groups
- Convening around potential collective investment return/P3 models
- Setting standards for separating speculative and unfeasible developments from credible ones
