- Data centers could draw up to 15 percent of U.S. power by 2030
- DOE is leasing four federal sites for self-powered AI campuses
- DOE CIO Dawn Zimmer will keynote the 2026 FedCiv Summit on Oct. 29!
Artificial intelligence runs on electricity, and America’s appetite for it is climbing faster than the grid can comfortably follow. A DOE-backed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study released in June projects data centers could consume 9.5 percent to 15 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from roughly 4.5 percent today, E&E News reported.
For the Department of Energy, that curve has turned a utility-planning question into a matter of national security and industrial policy. Over the past 15 months, DOE has opened federal land to privately financed AI campuses, pressed grid regulators to speed hookups for power-hungry facilities and enlisted its 17 national laboratories in a push for AI-driven discovery.
GovCon leaders who want to understand where DOE’s technology priorities are headed can hear from DOE Chief Information Officer Dawn Zimmer, a Wash100 Award winner, when she delivers a morning keynote at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2026 FedCiv Summit on Oct. 29. Make sure your GovCon company is represented at the event before tickets sell out!
How Much Power Do Data Centers Need?
The short answer: more than anyone planned for. The Berkeley Lab study found data centers are expected to drive more than 40 percent of U.S. electricity demand growth over the next five years, with efficiency gains in new chips swamped by the sheer volume of new computing.
The climb is steep even by recent standards. Data center electricity use rose from 58 terawatt-hours in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023, when it accounted for about 4.4 percent of national consumption.
DOE has framed the gap between supply and demand as a reliability issue. Its July 2025 grid reliability report warned that plant retirements combined with projected load growth could raise the risk of power outages 100-fold by 2030. The report found 104 gigawatts of generation is slated to retire by 2030, to be replaced by 209 GW of new capacity, only 22 GW of which would come from firm baseload sources.
How Is DOE Putting Federal Land to Work?
DOE’s signature move has been to turn its own acreage into launch pads for privately funded AI campuses that bring their own power. The groundwork came from an executive order signed July 23, 2025, which directs DOE, Interior and the Department of War to authorize data center construction on appropriate federal lands.
The next day, DOE selected four sites for AI data center and energy generation projects: Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Reservation, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Savannah River Site. Energy Secretary Chris Wright cast the effort in historic terms.
“By leveraging DOE land assets for the deployment of AI and energy infrastructure, we are taking a bold step to accelerate the next Manhattan Project—ensuring U.S. AI and energy leadership,” Wright said.
Two of the four sites now have named partners.
Savannah River Site, South Carolina
Amentum announced in July that the National Nuclear Security Administration selected it to negotiate a phased lease for a 1 GW AI data center backed by about 2 GW of on-site generation, starting with natural gas and bridging to advanced nuclear. NNSA said pairing the campus with dedicated generation is meant to keep its power costs off existing utility customers, the Aiken Standard reported.
Mark Whitney, president of Amentum’s energy and environment business, tied the opportunity to the company’s long history at the site.
“For generations, Amentum has helped solve some of the nation’s most complex engineering and nuclear challenges, including at the Savannah River Site,” Whitney said.
Paducah, Kentucky
On July 29, DOE tapped Brookfield to develop and operate a 1.8 GW AI campus at its Paducah site, with NextEra Energy building up to 2 GW of gas-fired generation and 2.6 GW of battery storage to power it, Reuters reported. The companies peg the privately funded investment at $100 billion, with operations scheduled to begin in 2028 and full development four years later.
NextEra said the project fulfills the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, meaning the campus brings and pays for its own power rather than passing energy costs to households.
Idaho National Laboratory and Oak Ridge
The remaining two sites are still in play. DOE’s Oak Ridge solicitation offers two parcels, one at the East Tennessee Technology Park and one next to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for long-term leases funded entirely by the selected companies. Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil pitched the opportunity as a chance to build alongside the national labs.
“This RFP represents more than a ground lease for AI data center development, it offers U.S. companies a potential chance to anchor their partnership with one of our nation’s greatest assets, our National Labs,” Gil said.
Developer selections at Oak Ridge and Idaho National Laboratory rank among the most closely watched federal energy opportunities on the horizon.
How Is DOE Speeding Up Grid Connections?
Land is only half the equation. A data center can rise in a couple of years, but plugging it into the grid can take far longer, and DOE has leaned on regulators to close that gap.
On Oct. 23, 2025, Wright used his Section 403 authority to direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to start a rulemaking on connecting large loads such as AI data centers to the transmission system, calling timely grid access for those facilities an urgent issue, according to Gibson Dunn.
FERC answered on June 18 with show cause orders directing all six regional grid operators, including PJM, which serves Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley, to justify or reform their rules for large and co-located loads, according to McGuireWoods. Operators faced an Aug. 17 deadline to respond.
Reliability is moving in lockstep. On May 4, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. issued a rare Level 3 alert after events in which more than 1,000 megawatts of data center load dropped off the grid within seconds, EEPower reported.
Who Pays for the New Power?
The White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, signed March 4 by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI, commits hyperscalers to build, bring or buy new generation and cover the grid upgrades serving their data centers. By July, more than 200 organizations had committed to the pledge, Atlanta News First reported.
GovCons working anywhere along this chain, from site development to grid modernization to cybersecurity, can hear how DOE leaders like CIO Zimmer and Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response Emily Burdick are thinking about the road ahead at the 2026 FedCiv Summit. Save your seat now!
What Is DOE’s Genesis Mission?
DOE is also a major consumer of compute. The Genesis Mission, launched by executive order on Nov. 24, 2025, directs the department to build an integrated AI discovery platform that harnesses its 17 national laboratories, supercomputers and scientific data alongside industry and academic partners.
The hardware is arriving fast. NVIDIA is helping build Argonne National Laboratory’s Solstice supercomputer, which will pack 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, alongside a smaller Equinox system, HPCwire reported. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the AMD-powered Lux system is designed to be the first operational Genesis Mission platform, with production work expected to start this month, AMD said.
How Does the Military Fit In?
The same push for dedicated power is reaching the Department of War. On Aug. 26, the Army and the Defense Innovation Unit awarded $2.2 billion to deploy more than 20 microreactors across five installations under the Janus Program, tapping Antares Nuclear, BWXT Advanced Technologies, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, Radiant Industries and Westinghouse Government Services, POWER reported.
DOE’s test beds are part of that pipeline: Radiant’s Kaleidos demonstration unit arrived Aug. 20 at DOME, the microreactor test bed at Idaho National Laboratory, according to ANS Nuclear Newswire.
How Are Energy Shocks Abroad Raising the Stakes?
This year’s conflict with Iran, which began Feb. 28 and disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, put DOE’s energy security mission front and center. On March 11, DOE committed 172 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a 400-million-barrel coordinated International Energy Agency release. Wright closed his announcement with a note of reassurance.
“Rest assured, America’s energy security is as strong as ever,” he said.
At home, the picture for data center power looked steadier. Wright said in March that U.S. natural gas prices had not risen even as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel spiked, a meaningful point given that gas is the leading fuel for new data center power, including at both of DOE’s flagship sites.
The overseas picture also sharpened the case for building at home. Drone strikes this spring damaged data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, Bloomberg reported, highlighting the value of secure U.S. federal sites with dedicated power.
Who Is Dawn Zimmer?
Zimmer was appointed DOE’s permanent CIO in November 2025 after serving in multiple acting capacities, including as principal deputy CIO overseeing enterprise technology strategy across DOE headquarters and the national laboratory enterprise. She leads the technology and cybersecurity backbone of a department whose mission now runs through AI.
She brings more than two decades of enterprise IT and modernization leadership. Her federal career includes 16 years at the Federal Aviation Administration, where she led a 60,000-mailbox migration to Microsoft 365 in 26 days, and a stint as deputy director in the Department of Justice’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, where she managed a $115 million budget. She also served as executive director for IT engagement and experience at Virginia Tech.
Zimmer earned a 2026 Wash100 Award for advancing enterprise IT modernization, strengthening cybersecurity governance and enabling secure AI adoption across DOE. In accepting the honor, she connected that work directly to the department’s energy mission.
“This recognition underscores the critical role that IT modernization plays in advancing the Department of Energy’s vital missions, from ensuring energy security to fostering scientific innovation at scale,” Zimmer said upon accepting her award.
What Will Dawn Zimmer Discuss in Her Keynote?
During her much anticipated 2026 FedCiv Summit keynote address, Zimmer may discuss:
- DOE’s multi-vendor AI strategy and the growth of its Joulix platform, which recently added Google’s Gemini
- The department’s push to consolidate more than 50 separate IT environments into a unified system
- Cybersecurity governance across DOE’s energy, science and national security systems
- How DOE’s IT enterprise supports the Genesis Mission and AI work across the national labs
- Equipping the DOE workforce with secure, advanced AI tools
On vendor selection, Zimmer told FedScoop in July that employee demand, not model count, drives Joulix’s roadmap.
“Nobody’s going to use all of them,” she said.
Hear from Dawn Zimmer at the 2026 FedCiv Summit.
Which Other Energy Leaders Will Speak?
Zimmer is not the only DOE voice on the agenda. Principal Deputy Director Emily Burdick of DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, or CESER, which leads the department’s work to protect the grid, will join the panel Connecting the Mission: AI, Interoperability, and Trusted Information Sharing.
That discussion will be moderated by Reid l’Anson, an economist at Kpler, a commodities and energy data firm, and will also feature Tiffany Swygert, acting deputy director in the Office of Information Technology at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Richard Miller, chief growth officer of Nokia Federal Solutions.
Basia Sall, director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Data, AI, Technology and Applications Division, will also appear on the panel Digital Labor in the Workforce of Tomorrow, bringing the perspective of the agency that will license the next wave of reactors powering AI.
Why Should GovCons Attend the 2026 FedCiv Summit?
The 2026 FedCiv Summit, set for Thursday, Oct. 29, at the Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City in Arlington, Virginia, offers GovCons a full day of insight into the civilian agency priorities driving the next wave of federal spending on AI, data and modernization.
Alongside Zimmer, the FedCiv Summit keynote lineup features:
- Chief Information Officer Mangala Kuppa of the Department of Labor
- Chief Acquisition Officer Greg Justice of the General Services Administration (pending confirmation)
- Deputy Administrator William Briggs of the Small Business Administration
- Pavan Pidugu, a Wash100 Award winner and former chief digital and information officer of the Department of Transportation (pending confirmation)
Panels throughout the day will dig into observability for federal shared services, human capital, digital labor, AI-driven modernization under the OneGov strategy and trusted information sharing, with speakers from HHS, State, Commerce, Interior, OPM, FDA, CMS and NOAA alongside leading industry partners.
For contractors pursuing work tied to DOE’s AI and energy agenda, the 2026 FedCiv Summit is a chance to hear directly from the leaders setting technology direction, then connect with peers during dedicated networking sessions. Don’t miss this incredible industry-government networking opportunity!
