Surely the president of Florida\u2019s largest utility understands that the challenge facing Florida is far larger than simply designing the right rate structure.<\/p>\n
The issue is not merely who pays for the electricity. The larger question is whether Florida \u2014 and the nation \u2014 fully appreciate the scale and velocity of the coming demand.<\/p>\n
The parent company of FPL, NextEra Energy, has reportedly explored a merger with Dominion Energy<\/a> in Virginia, the epicenter of America\u2019s data-center economy. Northern Virginia already contains the largest concentration of data centers in the world.<\/p>\n That matters because Virginia is now confronting exactly the issues Florida says it has planned for: extraordinary electricity demand growth, transmission bottlenecks, local land-use conflicts, water consumption concerns and mounting questions about long-term grid reliability.<\/p>\n A single hyperscale AI data-center campus can consume as much electricity as a medium-sized city. Some projections suggest AI-related electric demand could fundamentally alter utility planning assumptions nationwide over the next decade.<\/p>\n And electricity is only part of the story.<\/p>\n Modern data centers also consume enormous quantities of water for cooling systems. In a state already dealing with aquifer protection, Everglades restoration, saltwater intrusion, drought management and rapid population growth, water allocation may become just as significant a challenge as electric generation itself.<\/p>\n Bores does not mention that.<\/p>\n Nor does he discuss perhaps the most immediate constraint of all: labor.<\/p>\n Who is going to build all of this?<\/p>\n The expansion of data centers and electric infrastructure requires electricians, linemen, welders, HVAC specialists, pipefitters, engineers and skilled construction workers.<\/p>\n Florida and much of the country already face serious shortages in the skilled trades. The same workforce needed for power plants, substations and transmission systems is also needed for housing construction, storm recovery, infrastructure replacement and commercial development.<\/p>\n The challenge may not simply be capital investment. The challenge may be whether enough trained people exist to physically build the infrastructure the AI economy requires.<\/p>\n To be fair, Bores is correct that Florida has taken steps ahead of many states. Requiring large users to pay the direct cost of service is smart policy. But his opinion piece reads as though the problem is largely solved through rate design and regulatory planning.<\/p>\n It is not.<\/p>\n The real issue is whether America\u2019s infrastructure systems \u2014 electrical, water, workforce, permitting and environmental \u2014 can keep pace with a technological revolution moving faster than government planning cycles.<\/p>\n And that raises another uncomfortable question: Do elected officials and regulators fully understand the velocity of the changes now underway?<\/p>\n Because once data-center growth accelerates, these facilities are not easily relocated. Communities will live for decades with the consequences involving energy demand, water usage, land use and infrastructure strain.<\/p>\n None of this means Florida should reject data centers or AI investment. Quite the opposite. These facilities may become as economically transformative as railroads, highways, ports or airports once were.<\/p>\n But honesty matters.<\/p>\n The public deserves a fuller discussion than simply whether residential customers subsidize large industrial users. The broader question is whether Florida is truly prepared \u2014 physically, environmentally, economically and politically \u2014 for the scale of infrastructure transformation that artificial intelligence is about to demand.<\/p>\n Chris Corrie is a Bonita Springs City Council member. He was a certified public accountant and partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers. This opinion piece was originally published<\/a> by the Naples Daily News and media partners<\/a> of The Invading Sea. Banner photo: Cables in a data center (iStock image).<\/p>\n Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here<\/a>. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, email Editor Nathan Crabbe<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chris Corrie Scott Bores, president of Florida Power & Light, makes a reasonable and important point: Florida…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4038,127735,52520,117690,103479,28,30,29,101103,114733,3741,24764,117694,9574,87708],"class_list":["post-309300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cooling-systems","tag-data-centers","tag-dominion-energy","tag-electricity-demand","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-power-light-fpl","tag-hyperscale-data-centers","tag-infrastructure","tag-labor","tag-nextera-energy","tag-virginia","tag-water-use"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/virginia-data-centers-1024x576.jpg\")
An aerial view of data centers intermingled with other commercial buildings in Loudoun County, Virginia (Theodore Christopher, CC0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chris-Corrie.webp\")
Chris Corrie<\/p>\n