Big Tech, governors and the White House have leaned on U.S. energy regulators to do just one thing in 2026: Clean up the giant mess that’s keeping data centers off the power grid and frustrating American voters with rising utility bills.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday stepped into the fray, asserting leadership over a fragmented U.S. energy system struggling to keep up with the costs and demands for electricity to power artificial intelligence.
The five-member commission with extraordinary power to shape interstate electricity markets voted unanimously to move swiftly toward policies that bring AI data centers more quickly onto the electric grid. And it directed the power industry to keep tighter controls on the ballooning cost of building energy infrastructure for AI companies.
“This FERC is not the old sleepy agency that it has been in the past. We can’t afford to be, and our country cannot afford for us to be,” FERC Chair Laura Swett told POLITICO afterward. “We are unified in protecting the American ratepayer.”
