Call it the electricity election.
On Tuesday, Democrats won a pair of gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia and took two seats on Georgia’s utility board with pledges to hold the line on rising utility bills.
Their victory — and the focus on electricity costs — is significant because the three states are at the center of a national debate over how to meet a spike in electricity demand from data centers.
Virginia is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, which are also multiplying rapidly in Georgia. And New Jersey is dealing with price increases from PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest regional electricity market, as it struggles to keep up with surging electricity demand from data centers in a 13-state service area that includes Virginia.
