NextEra Energy, Inc.

Florida-based energy company that owns natural gas plants and the Seabrook nuclear facility in New England, contributed $20 million to support the 2021 referendum. - Major funder of opposition

New England has paid some of the highest electricity prices in the country for decades, hostage to constrained natural gas pipelines that spike costs every winter. On January 16, 2026, a $1.6 billion transmission line began delivering 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to the region—enough to meet 20% of Massachusetts' electricity needs and save ratepayers an estimated $50 million annually.

Updated Feb 1

Florida-based utility that owns fossil fuel and nuclear plants competing with NECEC power. - Lead funder of opposition campaign

For 40 years, Hydro-Québec wanted to sell more power to New England. For 40 years, transmission bottlenecks and local opposition stopped them. On January 16, 2026, a 145-mile power line through Maine's western woods began delivering 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydroelectricity to Massachusetts—enough to supply 20% of the state's needs and the largest clean energy transmission addition to New England's grid in decades. Ten days later, during a winter storm, the line went dark.

Updated Jan 30

NextEra Energy is a Fortune 200 energy company headquartered in Juno Beach, Florida, and the world’s largest electric utility holding company by market capitalization, with a diverse portfolio spanning renewables, natural gas and nuclear. - Largest U.S. utility and major energy infrastructure developer serving AI data center loads

Since late 2022, U.S. regulators and utilities have warned that a new class of digital infrastructure—AI-optimized data centers—could reshape national power demand, ending an era of flat electricity consumption and forcing a rapid buildout of generation and transmission. By early 2026, those warnings have crystallized into concrete challenges: PJM Interconnection's December 2025 capacity auction hit the $333.44/MW-day price cap and failed to meet reliability requirements for the first time in its history, with data centers accounting for $6.5 billion—or 40%—of the auction's $16.4 billion in costs. Regional grid operators now project U.S. data center electricity consumption will grow from 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024 to over 400 TWh by 2030, while the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates data centres globally could more than double their electricity use to approximately 945 TWh in the same timeframe, with AI-optimized servers as the main driver.

Updated Jan 27

America's largest electric utility by market cap, now pivoting to become a major data center power provider through nuclear restart and gigawatt-scale campus development. - Building 15 GW of power for data centers by 2035

Alphabet just paid $4.75 billion for a power company. Not a tech company that happens to use power—an actual infrastructure firm that builds solar farms and data centers. The deal gives Google control over 10.8 gigawatts of generating capacity, enough to power 8 million homes. Tech giants spent 2024 locking down nuclear reactors, buying stakes in power plants, and signing multi-billion dollar energy deals because the AI boom hit a hard limit: there's not enough electricity. By December 2025, the federal government joined the race—the Department of Energy opened federal land at Oak Ridge for nuclear-powered AI data centers, while advanced nuclear startups raised over $500 million in a single week.

Updated Dec 29, 2025