Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order requiring AI data center developers to sign legally binding consent agreements meeting a new set of state standards before their projects can proceed, in what his office called the nation’s strictest guardrails on the industry.
What the order actually requires
The order directs Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection to only review permit applications from developers who have committed to the state’s “GRID” requirements, covering energy affordability, environmental protection, workforce development, transparency, and community engagement, according to the governor’s own announcement. Developers must first submit a notice of intent, then detailed compliance plans, before signing a legally enforceable consent order with penalties for noncompliance. The order also removes AI data center proposals from the state’s fast-track permitting process entirely and bars the use of nondisclosure agreements on these projects.
The cost provision
Developers will be required to fund the full cost of their own electricity infrastructure needs, including any grid upgrades, rather than passing those costs on to ordinary Pennsylvania ratepayers, per the governor’s office.
Why it matters
Barring NDAs on data center projects is the detail worth underlining here: those agreements have been a recurring point of friction in other states, where residents and local officials have complained they couldn’t get basic information about a project’s water or power draw before it was approved. Making developers absorb their own grid-upgrade costs directly addresses the most common public complaint about AI data centers nationally, that everyday electricity customers end up subsidizing the industry’s buildout. Whether other states follow Pennsylvania’s specific approach, or developers simply route new projects to states with looser rules, is the real test of how much leverage a single state actually has here.
What to watch: whether other states adopt similar consent-order requirements, and how the first developers respond to Pennsylvania’s new process.
