If you want to gauge the political temperature around utility bills and the datacenter boom, the Department of Energy just made its biggest loan in history to help keep a lid on utility bills in a datacenter hotspot. One that includes a swing state, Georgia.
The department’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing will provide a package of loans worth up to $26.5 billion to two subsidiaries of utility Southern Co., Alabama Power and Georgia Power. It is a huge sum, equivalent to almost a third of Southern’s five-year capital expenditure plan (with which the loan drawing period mostly overlaps) and ...