CapitalUnited States

AWS Commits $1B to Communities Near its U.S. Data Centers

Credited to Converge Digest · convergedigest.com4d ago

Useful

Amazon Web Services is committing more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities hosting its U.S. data centers, adding a community-investment layer to one of the industry’s largest AI infrastructure expansion programs. The new Built Together initiative will direct funding toward education, workforce development, energy affordability, water and energy conservation, and priorities identified by individual communities. Amazon says it invested $276 billion in data centers between 2011 and 2025 and continues to pursue major U.S. expansions.

Built Together includes measurable targets. Amazon plans to help cover community-college costs not met by other financial aid for residents in data-center communities and expand hands-on workforce training for occupations including electricians, HVAC technicians, fiber-optic technicians and IT workers. The company is targeting capacity to prepare as many as 100,000 workers annually through its training centers by the end of 2028. Energy-efficiency grants are planned for more than 30,000 homes and 300 schools and community buildings.

The initiative arrives as the physical expansion of AI infrastructure increasingly intersects with local electricity supply, grid investment, water availability, permitting and community acceptance. Amazon is simultaneously codifying an Amazon Data Center Commitment that includes energy and water metrics, community programs, and its goal of becoming water positive by 2030.

Commitment — More than $1 billion over five years

Workforce — Training capacity target of up to 100,000 workers annually by end-2028

Energy — Efficiency upgrades targeted at 30,000+ homes and 300+ schools/community buildings

“There is urgency to this data center buildout because we aren’t the only country that sees the benefits of AI,” said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS.

The significance of Built Together extends beyond the $1 billion commitment. Amazon’s infrastructure spending is operating at a vastly larger scale, while AWS has said infrastructure capacity remains constrained relative to demand. Power availability, transmission infrastructure, water requirements, permitting and community acceptance increasingly have to be addressed alongside servers, accelerators, networking and cooling when hyperscalers develop large AI campuses.

Amazon’s recent Louisiana expansion illustrates this broader model. Built Together extends the community component into a national framework. The program does not directly add compute capacity, but it addresses workforce, utility affordability, resource use and community engagement issues that accompany hyperscale data-center development.

Focus — Cloud computing, AI infrastructure, data centers, custom silicon and networking

Amazon Boosts CAPEX Plan to $220B Amid AI Capacity Constraints

Amazon Expands Louisiana AI Data Center Investment to $18 Billion

Amazon Ties $200 Billion 2026 Capex Plan to AI, AWS, and Custom Silicon

Amazon Q4 Highlights Accelerating AWS Infrastructure Spending

AWS Activates Project Rainier Data Center Campus

🌐 We’re tracking the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure and hyperscale data centers, including power, cooling, networking and new campus development across the U.S. Follow our Data Centers coverage on Converge Digest.

Original · Converge Digest

Front Method

Capital · United States

Competitive transmission in Texas could save ratepayers billions

Credited to Renewable Energy World · renewableenergyworld.com · 7d ago

Photograph · Renewable Energy World

Texas is in the midst of its largest transmission expansion in more than a decade. According to the findings in a new study, bidding out the projects could save ratepayers billions of dollars.

In fact, applying competitive bidding to ERCOT’s upcoming high-voltage transmission projects could lower upfront construction costs by $3 billion to $9 billion, according to a new report by Aurora Energy Research released by Texans for Affordable Transm i ssion, a project of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation. Over the life of the projects, ratepayers could save between $7 billion and $ 22 billion total, or about $206 to $660 per household.

ERCOT’s 2024 and 2025 Regional Transmission Plans outline about $36 billion in estimated costs for the Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP), which includes a new 765-kilovolt “backbone.” Transmission charges already make up as much as 15% of a typical residential bill in ERCOT, and they have risen about 34% in the past two years. The study notes that under current Texas law, new transmission is generally assigned to incumbent utilities through a right-of-first-refusal framework, meaning these projects would be built without competitive bidding.

“Texas is about to spend tens of billions of dollars on new transmission, and ratepayers will carry that cost for decades. This study shows that when developers compete and are held to binding cost commitments, projects come in on time and on budget. Texans deserve that same benefit”, said Barry Smitherman, Chairman of Texans for Affordable Transmission.

Aurora compared 47 completed transmission projects across six U.S. markets: SPP, MISO, CAISO, PJM, NYISO, and ERCOT’s own Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) program. Twenty were competitively procured, and 27 were not. Projects were chosen to be comparable in length, terrain, and voltage class.

On average, competitive projects finished ahead of their promised in-service dates in five of six markets, the study found. Three-quarters of competitive projects had no material delay, compared with just over a third of non-competitive projects. The researchers argue that when competitive projects did fall behind, the causes were “external and documented,” such as permitting, cost-allocation disputes, and COVID. Nearly one in five non-competitive projects reported no cause for delay at all in public filings.

In SPP and MISO, completed competitive projects came in about 25% below the grid operator’s initial cost estimates on average. That benchmark became the basis for the study’s Texas savings projections.

ERCOT’s CREZ program, which built about 3,600 miles of lines to deliver West Texas wind power, allowed new-entrant developers to compete alongside incumbents. The new entrants’ projects cost about $150,000 less per mile on average. Their final costs came in 9% below developer estimates, while incumbent projects ran 7% over. Lone Star Transmission’s 330-mile line, the first CREZ project completed, finished ahead of schedule and 7% under its developer estimate.

The study stresses that competition alone does not guarantee savings. Instead, researchers found that the strongest outcomes came from three variables utilized together:

The report compares two projects from the same developer: In SPP, the Crossroads-Hobbs-Roadrunner line came in exactly at its $291 million hard cap, which allowed no exceptions. In New York, the Empire State Line’s exceptions to its $110 million cap allowed costs passed to consumers to reach $249 million.

The study identifies four STEP components as candidates for competitive procurement because they are high-voltage greenfield lines with “broad regional benefits,” including:

The low end of the savings range ($3 billion upfront, $7 billion lifetime) covers only the 765-kV lines outside the Permian plan. The high end ($9 billion upfront, $22 billion lifetime) assumes the complete STEP program is competitively procured.

Can we all benefit from transmission competition?

The debut episode of the Factor This Policycast, hosted by Factor This content director Paul Gerke, features Caitlin Marquis, managing director at Advanced Energy United, and Paul Cicio, chair of the Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition ( ETCC ). Both are advocates for competitive transmission and share findings to support their case. They discuss how utilities request to ban competition outright, talk about FERC’s role in keeping rates affordable, and explore the finer points complicating broader transmission build-out- at a time we really need it.

About 15 years ago, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, mandated that utilities competitively bid out such projects, but that mandate isn’t being enforced, for reasons discussed on the program. New data from the think tank R Street highlights tremendous benefits of competitive transmission, though, including billions of dollars ultimately saved by ratepayers. Detractors argue the bidding process delays timelines and subjects projects to hidden costs, and a group of Midwest utilities has even asked FERC to halt bidding in MISO and SPP.