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But the challenges — some say the impossibility — of building new power plants to meet that demand so quickly has set off alarm bells for lawmakers, policymakers and regulators who wonder if those utility forecasts can be trusted.

One burning question is whether the forecasts are based on data center projects that may never get built — eliciting concern that regular ratepayers could be stuck with the bill to build unnecessary power plants and grid infrastructure at a cost of billions of dollars.

The scrutiny comes as analysts warn of the risk of an artificial intelligence investment bubble that’s ballooned tech stock prices and could burst.

Meanwhile, consumer advocates are finding that ratepayers in some areas — such as the mid-Atlantic electricity grid, which encompasses all or parts of 13 states stretching from New Jersey to Illinois, as well as Washington, D.C. — are already underwriting the cost to supply power to data centers, some of them built, some not.

“There’s speculation in there,” said Joe Bowring, who heads Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog in the mid-Atlantic grid territory. “Nobody really knows. Nobody has been looking carefully enough at the forecast to know what’s speculative, what’s double-counting, what’s real, what’s not.”

Suspicions about skyrocketing demand

There is no standard practice across grids or for utilities to vet such massive projects, and figuring out a solution has become a hot topic, utilities and grid operators say.

Uncertainty around forecasts is typically traced to a couple of things.

One concerns developers seeking a grid connection, but whose plans aren’t set in stone or lack the heft — clients, financing or otherwise — to bring the project to completion, industry and regulatory officials say.

Another is data center developers submitting grid connection requests in various separate utility territories, PJM Interconnection, which operates the mid-Atlantic grid, and Texas lawmakers have found.

Often, developers, for competitive reasons, won’t tell utilities if or where they’ve submitted other requests for electricity, PJM said. That means a single project could inflate the energy forecasts of multiple utilities.

The effort to improve forecasts got a high-profile boost in September, when a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member asked the nation’s grid operators for information on how they determine that a project is not only viable, but will use the electricity it says it needs.

“Better data, better decision-making, better and faster decisions mean we can get all these projects, all this infrastructure built,” the commissioner, David Rosner, said in an interview.

The Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of for-profit electric utilities, said it welcomed efforts to improve demand forecasting.

Real, speculative, or ‘somewhere in between’

The Data Center Coalition, which represents tech giants like Google and Meta and data center developers, has urged regulators to request more information from utilities on their forecasts and to develop a set of best practices to determine the commercial viability of a data center project.

The coalition’s vice president of energy, Aaron Tinjum, said improving the accuracy and transparency of forecasts is a “fundamental first step of really meeting this moment” of energy growth.

“Wherever we go, the question is, ‘Is the (energy) growth real? How can we be so sure?’” Tinjum said. “And we really view commercial readiness verification as one of those important kind of low-hanging opportunities for us to be adopting at this moment.”

Igal Feibush, the CEO of Pennsylvania Data Center Partners, a data center developer, said utilities are in a “fire drill” as they try to vet a deluge of data center projects all seeking electricity.

The vast majority, he said, will fall off because many project backers are new to the concept and don’t know what it takes to get a data center built.

States also are trying to do more to find out what’s in utility forecasts and weed out speculative or duplicative projects.

In Texas, which is attracting large data center projects, lawmakers still haunted by a blackout during a deadly 2021 winter storm were shocked when told in 2024 by the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, that its peak demand could nearly double by 2030.

They found that state utility regulators lacked the tools to determine whether that was realistic.

Texas state Sen. Phil King told a hearing earlier this year that the grid operator, utility regulators and utilities weren’t sure if the power requests “are real or just speculative or somewhere in between.”

Lawmakers passed legislation sponsored by King, now law, that requires data center developers to disclose whether they have requests for electricity elsewhere in Texas and to set standards for developers to show that they have a substantial financial commitment to a site.

Electricity bills are rising, too

PPL Electric Utilities, which delivers power to 1.5 million customers across central and eastern Pennsylvania, projects that data centers will more than triple its peak electricity demand by 2030.

Vincent Sorgi, president and CEO of PPL Corp., told analysts on an earnings call this month that the data center projects “are real, they are coming fast and furious” and that the “near-term risk of overbuilding generation simply does not exist.”

The data center projects counted in the forecast are backed by contracts with financial commitments often reaching tens of millions of dollars, PPL said.

Still, PPL’s projections helped spur a state lawmaker, Rep. Danilo Burgos, to introduce a bill to bolster the authority of state utility regulators to inspect how utilities assemble their energy demand forecasts.

Ratepayers in Burgos’ Philadelphia district just absorbed an increase in their electricity bills — attributed by the utility, PECO, to the rising cost of wholesale electricity in the mid-Atlantic grid driven primarily by data center demand.

That’s why ratepayers need more protection to ensure they are benefiting from the higher cost, Burgos said.

“Once they make their buck, whatever company,” Burgos said, “you don’t see no empathy towards the ratepayers.”

Belém, Brazil, November 15, 2025 – The COP Action Agenda on Regenerative Landscapes (AARL) today announced a surge in investments to advance production, conservation, and restoration, advancing integrated solutions to deliver resilient agrifood systems. More than 40 organizations reported $9B+ in committed investment, covering more than 210 million hectares of land, reaching 12 million farmers across 90+ commodities and 110+ countries by 2030, highlighting significant progress since the initiative was launched at COP28.

AARL – launched by the COP28 Presidency, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), with support from the UN Climate Change High-Level Champions – brings together farmers, agribusinesses, financiers, and leading non-state actors to aggregate, accelerate, and amplify collective action and investments to overcome barriers to scaling regenerative landscape approaches.

Driving Scale and Impact

Since the initiative’s launch at COP28, participation has significantly grown, expanding from 25 to 40+ organizations, including commodity traders, consumer goods companies, retailers, agtech providers, financial institutions, and other non-state actor partners.

While the total land under regenerative transition reflects a stricter definition and revised expectations (resulting in a decrease since 2024), the maturity and quality of programs have advanced. The share of initiatives at-scale (10,000 hectares) has grown from 38% to 52%, and the proportion of programs with three or more partners has expanded from 16% to 40%. Investment has accelerated far beyond land growth, increasing more than fourfold from $2.2B in 2023 to $9B in 2025. Drawing from the AARL data, the Guidebook for Landscape Investments collates 12 case studies showcasing replicable success factors for landscape regeneration, highlighting the impact that agrifood companies can achieve when working collaboratively, putting in place holistic financial and technical support mechanisms for producers.

However, data collection and reporting remain areas for improvement. Currently, 67% of responding participants are measuring carbon impacts in at least some programs, but only 38% are reporting on carbon outcomes. Reporting on soil health, biodiversity, water, and farmer livelihoods lags further behind, underscoring the challenges in identifying robust yet cost-effective monitoring, reporting and verification systems and the need for greater transparency.

We see firsthand how business leadership, when coupled with inclusive multi-stakeholder collaboration, is indispensable to unlocking the full potential of regenerative landscapes.

– Dan Ioschpe – Climate High-Level Champion – COP30, Brazil

This work shows show how businesses can (and must) work shoulder-to-shoulder with local partners, governments, investors, and farmers to create regenerative landscapes that deliver measurable climate, nature, and social benefits. This is not a solo journey; it is collective action in its fullest sense.

– Nigar Arpadarai – Climate High-Level Champion – COP29, Azerbaijan

The 9B+ dollars committed to regenerating agri-food landscapes by businesses in the AARL demonstrate the scale of the transition underway in agriculture. The next phase of this initiative will showcase the results these $9B+ can deliver on the ground, and how this investment can de-risk the transition for farmers.

– Diane Holdorf, Executive Vice President, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

The power of AARL is not only in the $9B its members are committing to regenerative landscapes, but also its unique model of place-based collaboration that can deliver impact at scale. We’re seeing evidence of this in the Landscape Accelerator Brazil.

– Shalini Unnikrishnan, Managing Director & Senior Partner, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Place-Based Acceleration in Brazil

At COP29, AARL marked a pivotal step in moving from ambition to action with the launch of its first landscape accelerator: the Landscape Accelerator Brazil (LAB).

Launched in partnership with Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, the LAB focuses on the Cerrado biome and Pará state (Amazon). Research from the LAB shows that restoring pastures and advancing regenerative practices across 50M+ hectares represents a $93B investment opportunity, with an average 19% internal rate of return for 610,000 farmers. This commercially bankable opportunity requires de-risking through blended finance approaches.

A year in, the LAB has made significant progress to unleash this opportunity:

• Blended finance: Quantifying the business case and financing stack needed to scale regenerative landscapes in Brazil
• Harmonized measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV): Developing context-specific and streamlined metrics and MRV implementation guidance
• Aligned policy: Identifying four key policy priorities to unlock private sector investment

In 2026, the LAB aims to evolve into a co-investment platform focused on specific landscapes, with the ambition of mobilizing $5 billion by 2030 – as outlined in its Action Plan.

Looking Ahead

In 2024, AARL was identified as a mechanism supporting the delivery of the UNCCD COP16 Riyadh Action Agenda. Additionally, AARL will partner with the Resilient Agriculture Investment for net-Zero land degradation (RAIZ) accelerator, which the COP30 Presidency will announce on 19^th November.

Going forward, the AARL will replicate the accelerator blueprint in new geographies – starting with India in 2026. AARLwelcomes collaborators across agricultural landscapes in this global effort, including governments, businesses, financiers, producers, civil society, research organizations and other non-state actors.