For those us who love the art and craft of regional marketing and economic development, and perhaps have a fair understanding of our energy reality, have a seat and let’s buckle in.

We begin with a little math, the implications of which are staggering: U.S. data center electricity demand is projected to double by 2030, soaring from 448 terawatt hours this year to 980 TWh by decade’s end. Vehicle electrification is accelerating, with charging infrastructure struggling to keep pace. Charging sessions surged 34 percent in 2025, while new ports grew only 16 percent. Digital consumption continues its relentless climb.

Meanwhile, construction of the baseload power plants needed to meet this tsunami of demand remains mired in permitting delays, supply chain bottlenecks and regulatory uncertainty.

And as regional economic development engines and authorities market and compete for share of mind, and more important, for relocation and growth—how do these priorities reconcile?

Indeed, we are witnessing the emergence of a new economic constraint that few regional leaders seem prepared to address as much of it is out of their control: The energy availability gap. It will fundamentally reshape how communities compete for economic development and the reality of what promises they can keep in regional attraction.

For decades, economic development officials sold their regions on familiar advantages: Tax incentives, available land, workforce quality, proximity to markets and more. Energy was a checkbox item, assumed to be abundant and cheap. Those assumptions are evaporating in real time.

In Virginia’s PJM grid region, for example, electricity rates jumped 20 percent in summer 2025, driven partly by anticipated data center demand. The median wait time for an interconnection agreement—the permission slip for new power generation to connect to the grid—now stands at five years. FIVE YEARS. Projects that break ground today won’t deliver electrons until the late 2020s, while AI companies and manufacturers need power tomorrow.

This disconnect creates a brutal paradox for regional competitiveness. The very industries driving 21st-century economic growth, such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, electric vehicle production—they are also the most energy-intensive. A single large AI data center can draw over 100 megawatts continuously, equivalent to powering 80,000 homes. These facilities aren’t discretionary investments that can wait. They represent national competitiveness in the AI race against China and other rivals. Yet, in region after region, the grid simply cannot accommodate them without multi-year infrastructure buildouts.

The consequences are already manifesting.

Georgia’s Public Service Commission staff recently noted that data centers are, “underperforming expectations” due to project cancellations and delays. This is not due to demand disappearing. Rather, it’s because the energy infrastructure couldn’t materialize fast enough. Some hyperscalers are resorting to “bring-your-own-power” solutions, deploying mobile gas turbines or negotiating direct power purchase agreements to bypass grid constraints entirely. This works for tech giants with billions in capital, but it leaves everyone else (mid-sized manufacturer, the growing logistics operation, the expanding healthcare system) competing for increasingly scarce grid capacity.

What makes this crisis particularly insidious is its compounding nature. As regions struggle with inadequate baseload generation, costs spiral. Idaho Power, waiting years for transmission line permits, spent $880 million converting coal plants to gas-fired generation as a temporary fix, which equates to costs ultimately borne by ratepayers (you and me). Puget Sound Energy saw permitting delays add $52 million to a 16-mile transmission upgrade. These aren’t isolated incidents. They represent the new normal. Every month a power project sits waiting for permits, construction costs climb due to inflation, interest accrues on financing, and ratepayers absorb the difference.

Meanwhile, the generation fleet itself is aging out faster than replacements arrive. From 2020 to 2025, the PJM region retired nearly 17 gigawatts of reliable baseload capacity, primarily coal plants forced offline by environmental regulations. Approximately 40 GW more, or 21 percent of PJM’s installed capacity, faces potential retirement by 2030. New nuclear plants in Western economies have suffered “multi-year delays and cost overruns pushing final capital expenditures into the $10,000-15,000 per kilowatt range,” according to recent analysis, placing them beyond economic viability for most projects. Small modular reactors remain largely theoretical, with leading U.S. projects recently canceled due to soaring costs.

Natural gas generation offers faster deployment, with projects typically requiring 12-48 months from groundbreaking to operation. But even gas faces headwinds: turbine manufacturers are racing to meet renewed demand, creating delivery backlogs stretching into 2029. Lead times for critical equipment like generation step-up transformers now exceed 143 weeks—nearly three years. Supply chains optimized for steady-state replacement cycles cannot pivot quickly enough to accommodate the surge in demand.

For economic development professionals, this creates an entirely new competitive landscape. Regions that historically competed on workforce development and quality of life now must compete on gigawatts and interconnection queue position. The uncomfortable truth is that many communities pursuing major data center projects or advanced manufacturing facilities lack the electrical infrastructure to support them. And they won’t have it for years.

This shouldn’t breed defeatism, however. It should inspire urgency and creativity. Some regions are getting ahead of the curve. States are beginning to streamline permitting for transmission projects and baseload generation. The federal government’s “Speed to Power” initiative aims to accelerate large-scale generation and transmission development, recognizing that electricity abundance is now a matter of economic competitiveness and national security. Proposals to fast-track baseload generation through interconnection queues acknowledge that reliability cannot be an afterthought in a grid strained by unprecedented demand growth.

But these efforts must accelerate dramatically. The projected 2030 U.S. generation capacity of 5,200 TWh represents a nearly 24 percent increase from 2023 levels. This is load growth not seen since the 1980s. Meeting this demand requires simultaneous action on multiple fronts: Expedited permitting without sacrificing environmental review rigor, modernized interconnection processes that don’t condemn projects to half-decade queues, and realistic assessment of which technologies can actually deliver baseload power at scale within necessary timeframes.

Along with the aforementioned incentives and tools aimed at luring would-be relocators, economic development organizations must evolve from energy customers to energy strategists. This means maintaining AND MARKETING detailed inventories of available grid capacity, understanding regional interconnection queue dynamics, building relationships with utilities years before recruitment prospects arrive, and even exploring public-private partnerships for dedicated generation assets. Some forward-thinking regions are already pursuing these strategies; others remain oblivious to the coming constraint.

The stakes extend beyond individual project wins and losses. Regions that solve the energy equation will compound advantages over decades, attracting the industries that drive innovation and wealth creation. Those that don’t will watch opportunities flow elsewhere, hemorrhaging tax base and talent to competitors who took the electron shortage seriously. In an economy increasingly powered by computation and electrification, energy abundance is economic abundance.

The debacle is upon us. As marketers, we cannot put lipstick on a pig that can’t be brought to life. The question is whether states and regional leaders will recognize it in time to act. Or,  will they be forced to continue fighting with one hand tied behind their backs, competing with 20th-century tools for 21st-century industries, wondering why the deals keep going to places that figured out how to turn the lights on.