The explosive growth of AI and data centers is creating unprecedented demand for electricity, raising important questions about energy affordability and reliability while triggering complex regulatory and policy disputes over grid interconnection, cost allocation, transmission upgrades, rate design for large-load customers, and behind-the-meter generation arrangements. These pressures are reshaping how data center power transactions get done, requiring increasingly creative commercial structures that balance cost, timing, reliability, and regulatory risk.
Jenner & Block has advised on more than $100 billion in data center power supply agreements. We deliver a uniquely comprehensive offering to clients seeking to power large data centers today. We advise utilities, technology companies, hyperscalers, and power suppliers in developing bespoke deal structures and negotiating complex agreements to develop critical infrastructure and provide data center customers with reliable and timely electric service. These transactions require specialists who are well-versed in the energy industry, applicable federal and state regulatory and rate frameworks, and current and emerging policy issues. Increasingly, these transactions require specialists who understand and can anticipate the knock-on effects of these large transactions on other customers and can think critically about emerging service structures.
Representative Experience
- Advising a major technology company in the structuring and negotiation of energy infrastructure and power supply and delivery arrangements for the largest proposed data center campus in the world, involving novel structures and cost considerations contemplating multiple gigawatts of new generation and significant wires investment
- Advising various utilities across the country on novel and strategic large-load integration and commercial issues, including transmission and generation buildout, power supply and delivery structures, rate design, interconnection, and cost allocation
- Representing a data center developer in the Southwest in creating a private electric network and sourcing firm power supply to serve 1 GW of data center load, involving novel issues of state regulation and innovative energy supply contracting
- Representing a specialty financing and equipment leasing company in a joint venture to develop a large-scale data center campus comprising multiple buildings, involving complex risk management, regulatory structuring, and cost allocation issues
- Representing a large Western landowner developing 600–1,000 MW of capacity to serve one or more data centers, analyzing arrangements from cost, reliability, and regulatory perspectives
- Representing an international infrastructure investor in the acquisition of a majority interest in a joint venture with a leading global data center developer and operator to develop and operate a large-scale, multi-tenant, data center campus in the greater Chicagoland area, involving complex joint venture structuring, power purchase and supply agreements, and shared services and facilities arrangements
- Defending utilities in class actions challenging electricity quality and voltage degradation attributed to data center load growth, obtaining voluntary dismissals
Key Contacts
Key Contacts