Public Power is Powering the Future of America’s Economy: LPPC Publishes NEW Private Business Use Report
Download the full report here.
LPPC members currently power over 18% of the nation’s large-load customers and approximately 36% of expected new data center interconnections over the next five years.
Public power utilities are essential to the Trump Administration’s goals to win the AI race, reshore manufacturing, and sustain American economic and military leadership.
In a recently released report, Private Use: Modernizing Outdated Private Business Use Treasury Regulations, LPPC shares findings from its 2025 Capital Investment & Large Load Growth member survey, that projects that LPPC members will interconnect 18 gigawatts of new data centers and 3 gigawatts of new advanced manufacturing and industrial loads by 2030. LPPC members stand ready to invest over $140 billion in electric infrastructure and build approximately 58 gigawatts of new generation in the next ten years.
However, under outdated Treasury regulations interpreting § 141 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), retail customer contracts that include minimum-demand features (for example, deposits, readiness requirements, withdrawal penalties, or minimum payments if the customer takes less power than requested) are treated as private business use if the contract term exceeds three years, which presents major risks to LPPC members.
A three-year contract is fundamentally misaligned with multi-billion-dollar investments in generation and transmission assets that are financed over decades and expected to operate for 30 years or more. By limiting utilities to short-term contracts, current private use rules shift the risk and potentially the cost to existing customers (households and businesses) even when the investment is being triggered by a small set of very large new customers that may require hundreds if not thousands of megawatts, to be served from the utility’s integrated system.
Without private use reforms, LPPC member utilities are left with only bad options:
Option 1: Assume extreme risk on behalf of existing customers by building major new infrastructure without durable commitments that match the investment horizon, or
Option 2: Decline large-load interconnection requests, constraining the local economy and the nation’s ability to power AI, data centers, and advanced manufacturing at the scale and speed now being demanded.
Across the country, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commission (NARUC) member state utility commissions and governors, FERC, DOE, and the National Energy Dominance Council are moving quickly on large-load tariffs and contracts. Major AI/data center customers like Google and Microsoft are embracing structures that protect affordability and support the grid investments needed for reliability and growth.
As of late 2025, at least 65 large-load tariffs were pending or in place across 34 states.
The time is now to update Treasury’s private business use regulations under IRC §141 permitting LPPC members to have the long-term commitments needed to ensure customer affordability while advancing America’s economic growth and prosperity.
Read the whole report here.
