Development and Benefits
Dan Lapato is Vice President of Planning at AGA.
The next decade in energy will be defined by a historic infrastructure buildout that must be accomplished efficiently, affordably, and without undue delay to meet the needs of our economy and the expectations of American consumers. Vitally, we must accomplish this rapid buildout without placing an undue burden on American families.
Data centers, advanced manufacturing. and other energy-intensive projects need to scale quickly and with reliable costs – and energy availability is the biggest challenge standing in the way of meeting those goals. The first priority for companies preparing for these major projects is sourcing and planning for the energy they will need.
Protecting customers, particularly low-income customers, is nonnegotiable. That begins with ratemaking policies that help ensure end-user rates are just and reasonable, allowing the utility to recover prudently incurred costs, while ensuring costs are borne by those who cause them.
For large, new anchor customers like data centers or industrial campuses, dedicated extensions or special contracts can put project-specific costs on project beneficiaries, ensuring that trillion-dollar companies pay their fair share of costs.