Supply and Demand: The Economic Opportunities and Challenges of Data Center
Event Summary
Family budgets and local economies depend on an abundant, equitably shared electricity supply.
Manufacturing plants, hospitals, and other large energy users depend on the same finite supply. As data centers increasingly pop up across the country and claim a rapidly growing share of the electricity supply, the consequences for other users must be considered. When a single facility can consume as much power as a small city, what other users are unable to access affordable electricity?
Data-center load growth can mean higher prices, reliability concerns, and difficult trade-offs on connections for utilities and regulators, with big consequences for local economic development. This seminar examines whether data-center growth crowds out other electricity users, including factories, clean-energy projects, and the economic development that follows them, or whether it ultimately drives the investment needed to expand supply for everyone. How this competition evolves and whether policymakers step in will shape where investment lands and which regions stand to benefit or face new economic difficulties.
Our featured speakers are Kate Gordon, CEO of CA FWD and former Senior Advisor to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and Carla Frisch, former Executive Director (Acting) and Principal Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Policy. The conversation will be moderated by Heather Boushey, professor of practice at the Kleinman Center and former member of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist to President Biden’s Investing in America Cabinet.
Join the EconClimate Lab at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy for a small group webinar! Please feel free to eat your lunch during.
Kate Gordon
CEO, CA FWDKate Gordon is the CEO of CA FWD, a statewide organization dedicated to a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive economy across every region of the state. She is a former Senior Advisor to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
Carla Frisch
Principal Deputy Director, U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of PolicyCarla Frisch is the Principal Deputy Director and former Acting Executive Director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Policy. Frisch provides analysis on all aspects of the energy sector and works across government to enable policy in support of a clean energy economy.
Heather Boushey
Professor of PracticeHeather Boushey is a professor of practice at the Kleinman Center. Boushey served in the Biden administration as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist to the President’s Investing in America cabinet.
