Shapiro redefines Pennsylvania's tech boom
In June 2025, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro stood in Berwick and described a new economic horizon for Pennsylvania: Amazon's plan to invest at least $20 billion in cloud-computing and artificial intelligence campuses across the commonwealth.
Pennsylvania was "all in on AI," he said, while casting the state as a major national hub for AI and next-generation technology.
Last week, however, the governor reversed course and redefined the terms for data-center development.
Shapiro signed Executive Order 2026-05, immediately removing data-center projects from the PA Permit Fast Track Program and making future data-center proposals ineligible for expedited review. The order does not prohibit developers from building in Pennsylvania. But it does establish a more demanding framework for projects seeking state permits.
The order centers on four items: energy affordability; transparency and community engagement; workforce and economic development; and environmental protection.
Developers that elect to participate in the Commonwealth's GRID framework must make legally binding commitments intended to address each of those concerns. Those commitments include paying the full cost of the additional generation, transmission, distribution and related infrastructure their projects require, rather than shifting those costs to households and other electric customers.
The contrast with Berwick is both striking and a reversal of evolution in the state's approach.
A year ago, Shapiro was making the case that Pennsylvania could move quickly enough to land a transformational investment. But last Tuesday, he hit the brakes.
In towns and townships across the Commonwealth, data centers are not principally an argument about AI. Rather, they are arguments about substations, water demand, land-use authority, construction jobs, expanded tax bases for townships and school districts, and the possible revival of small towns that have spent decades looking for major investment.
Data centers are not a fringe industry. They are part of the physical backbone of the modern economy, supporting cloud computing, banking, health care, manufacturing, universities, national security, small businesses, streaming services and the AI tools being adopted across nearly every sector.
Like rail lines, power plants, warehouses and steel mills before them, data centers are large infrastructure projects that require careful local planning. But their scale should not be confused with inherent harm.
Too often, the public debate treats "data centers" as though they describe a single, uniform kind of development. Yet projects differ in size, cooling technology, water source, power arrangements, workforce plans, tax structure, site conditions and the agreements they make with their host communities.
Pennsylvania was competing for an industry capable of bringing substantial construction investment, skilled-trades work, local tax revenue and the sort of long-term capital commitment many smaller communities have pursued for decades.
The economic value of a data center cannot be measured only by the size of its permanent employee parking lot. These are capital-intensive facilities.
Their value includes the union and nonunion trades that build them, the local suppliers and service businesses that support them, the tax base they establish, and the businesses and institutions that depend on reliable digital capacity.
Data power centers are increasingly shaping everyday American life; most people rarely think about it, but data centers are quietly running in the background of nearly every digital moment of our day. Just swipe a credit card, use Apple Pay, check your bank balance; all of those are processed through servers housed in a data center. Ditto for streaming a show, trolling social media, sending a text, or using Siri. Even errands such as checking out at a grocery store, using GPS, weather forecasts, medical creeds and 911 dispatches go through a system. And that doesn't even begin to touch our national security capabilities.
That does not mean communities should surrender local authority or overlook legitimate concerns about electric rates, water, noise, traffic or land use. It means the standard should be neither fear of the industry nor unconditional approval of every proposal.
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