Abe, anything else on the capacity crunch in PJM for the data centers?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, Paulina did a great job, uh, setting the stage there.

But, you know, it's, it's, it's really important to remember that there is a wide degree of uncertainty about how real all this load is.

If I remember correctly, it's thirty-two gigawatts of load the PJM projects over the next decade, uh, of which thirty is data centers.

And, and I think it's really important to remember that data centers are really, you know, at least the kinda hyperscale data centers that are driving the, uh, the, the load growth here, it's really a four-year-old industry.

And that's really important to remember because, you know, if you ask a four-year-old what do they wanna be when they grow up, they wanna be an astronaut, soccer player, art teacher, you know, professional pianist, right? And, and we're building, we're building out the load forecast as if these data centers are gonna meet all of their wildest aspirations.

[laughs]

Um, but before we get to that, actually, a- actually, you want to say a couple words as well, Abe?

Yeah, sure.

Uh, so Abe Silverman, I'm a research scholar at Johns Hopkins University, um, and most of my career I've actually been working on electricity market policy.

Um, you know, and, and, and I'm one of these people who sort of toils in the back corners of making the electric grid work and making sure that the price signals are right and we're driving the right kind of investment.

Um, and you know, and I've had a variety of different roles both at the federal government, uh, at state government, but most of my career has actually been in the private sector working for, uh, generation owners and investors of the electric grid.

Um, but a couple of years ago I left and, uh, moved to Johns Hop- uh, originally Columbia University and now Johns Hopkins University, where we basically work with states and other interested, um, entities in figuring out, how do we do this whole clean energy transition in an affordable manner?And while I would love to be talking about decarbonization policies and long-term de- decarbonization, um, you know, every conversation now, uh, devolves into a conversation about data centers.

I was at a, at a conference yesterday where somebody said, "How many people in the room have talked about data centers in the last 24 hours?" And, you know, about-

[laughs]