While delivering his proposed budget for 2026, Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, also announced the “Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development standards”, or “GRID.”

The standards currently consist of four principles that the commonwealth plans to hold developers to, although there is yet no legislative force behind them, or a clear plan of implementation.

The four points consist of “protecting energy and water resources”, “transparency and community engagement”, “delivering local jobs and community benefits”, and “responsible growth with accountability.”

Taken as a whole, meeting GRID standards will require data centres to minimise their negative environmental and economic impacts on local communities, improve outreach and communication and ensure local economic benefits. In exchange, projects that fit those metrics will enjoy “the Commonwealth’s full support, including speed and certainty in permitting and access to available incentives – ensuring responsible development that reflects Pennsylvania’s values”.

In a press conference, Shapiro indicated that he views it as necessary to ensure US dominance in the sphere of AI, particularly as China is a leading competitor.

“If you accept that, the question is ‘okay, if we’re going to build out the infrastructure to dominate on AI, where should it be?’ Well, Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned, because we generate so much energy here, to house these data centres,” said Shapiro.

“But I must tell you, I am worried about the manner in which some of these data centre developers are going about their business.”

Public matters

GRID has arrived in the midst of a delicate moment for data centre developments. While data centres are not strictly synonymous with AI development, the hyperscalers who are driving a significant portion of the development are facing headwinds in the public markets, while individual developments are facing growing hostility on the local level, and in some cases, outright bans or moratoriums.

In Louisiana, the city of New Orleans has placed a one-year moratorium on all data centre developments while the zoning code is updated to account for the facilities, but Mayor Helena Moreno has also publicly stated her opposition to the data centre project that prompted the revisions to the code.

Supporters of those bans often cite impacts on local energy prices and water supplies as well as a lack of lasting economic benefits.

Shapiro indicated that his administration has already implemented the changes outlined, and claimed “they have been endorsed by a number of the data centre companies and a number of local communities”, without specifying involved parties. The governor also expressed hope that legislators will update laws to facilitate all parties adhering to the standards.

James Grice, a partner and chair of the energy, infrastructure, and data centre groups at law firm Akerman, told Infrastructure Investor that the bigger stumbling block for development is that the GRID standards largely consist of practices that most developers are already adhering to. He allowed that clarity and transparency can be a point for improvement when it comes to data centre development, but stressed that this also applies to governments, which need to provide highly specific, reliable and consistently applied guidelines, a measure that GRID does not yet fully embody.

“If you take the worst case of these four points, you might create a situation where Pennsylvania is just not as interesting, and so now people will start looking at other jurisdictions,” Grice said. “There is a line [data centre developers] don’t want to cross.”

“One of the lines that I find in our practice, as we do so much powered land development, is incentive work. The incentives that are statutory and objectively available are obviously much more popular and much more viable for the data centre operator and user than when there is some kind of state-level discretion,” said Grice.

Bring your own power

While GRID’s ultimate impact is unclear, Pennsylvania has attracted significant recent attention from data centre developers.

The first principle of GRID, in which Shapiro said “developers must bring their own power generation online or fully fund new generation to meet their needs”, all without driving up electricity requirements for homeowners and businesses, is already part of the plan for some developers with projects in the Keystone State. Blackstone, for instance, announced in July 2025 a joint venture with PPL Corporation, which will serve as part of $25 billion in investments in data centres throughout Pennsylvania.

Global Infrastructure Partners, part of BlackRock, is also expanding its footprint in the state after Aligned Data Centers, recently acquired from Macquarie, put forward a proposal to build on the site of coal plants outside of Pittsburgh to run where new natural gas plants will provide up to 3.6GW of capacity for a $10 billion data centre campus, all behind the meter.

In fact, firm reliable power, on either side of the meter is a key draw for the state according to the CBRE Data Center Trends report published in February 2025, since local supplies of natural gas, coal plants with the potential for gas conversion and quick interconnect, as the reactivation of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant all position Pennsylvania well in an era when reliable access to firm power is an overriding concern for developers.

According to the Pennsylvania Data Center Proposals database, that trend has borne out. Pennsylvania currently has 50 active data centres, with another 52 in the proposal phase.