New technology and energy facilities are planned for Pennsylvania at a cost of more than $90 billion, including multiple power plants and data centers, possibly co-located.

President Donald Trump, cabinet secretaries, the state’s junior U.S. senator and leaders of industry-leading firms in both sectors announced the projects July 15 at the Pennsylvania Energy & Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh.

The vision they laid out breaks down to $56 billion in new energy infrastructure and $36 billion in new data centers. Trump and most of the other speakers framed the announcement as progress toward — and evidence of — the energy dominance the nation must have as it pursues its new Golden Age.

“Get ready, lots of jobs, lots of success, really, a beautiful thing, it’s going to be beautiful to behold,” Trump said.

He called EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin “the most important man on the dais” for his role in easing the regulations and limitations that could slow progress toward that goal.

U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R), hosting the event at Carnegie Mellon University, said he believed people will look back at the day as a seminal moment in the history of the state and perhaps even the nation.

Trump, McCormick and many others continued the narrative that vast amounts of power are key to dominating the artificial intelligence sector, which in turn is key to the United States’ future leadership role in the world.

Neither Trump nor any of the speakers who followed him indicated where the new generation equipment would be sourced for all these projects. It is widely reported to be in short supply with a long waiting list for new machinery.

Projects announced or mentioned at the event include:

• • Blackstone plans to invest more than $25 billion in Pennsylvania’s digital and energy infrastructure; subsidiary QTS already has acquired multiple data center sites in the northeast area of the state and will seek partners for the buildout. An additional $60 billion of in-state investment is expected to result.
  • PPL has formed a joint venture with Blackstone to invest in new gas-fired power plants.
  • Transmission operator FirstEnergy plans to spend $15 billion on infrastructure, personnel and processes to upgrade the grid in Pennsylvania through 2029.
  • Google, which plans $25 billion in data center construction and AI infrastructure across the PJM footprint in the next two years, announced a framework agreement with Brookfield Asset Management to deliver up to 3 GW of hydropower across the United States — the first deal of its kind — starting with two Pennsylvania facilities rated at 670 MW.
  • Google also plans to expand a previous grant to train new electricians in Pennsylvania and says it will offer free AI training to every small business in the state.
  • AI hyperscaler CoreWeave says it will commit more than $6 billion to equip a new data center in Lancaster and will be the tenant of the site.
  • Constellation Energy, which is investing $1.6 billion to restart the former Three Mile Island Unit 1 near Harrisburg, plans to perform 340 MW of uprates on its Limerick Clean Energy Center, Trump said, though Constellation itself said that work depends on securing customer commitments for the increased output.
  • Westinghouse Electric, headquartered in suburban Pittsburgh, plans to collaborate with Google Cloud to use AI tools to enhance and streamline construction and operation of nuclear plants. Westinghouse in June announced it is working to start construction of 10 new reactors — a $75 billion proposition — nationwide by 2030.
  • As announced in April, data centers and the nation’s largest gas-fired power plant are planned for construction where Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired plant once stood, in Homer City, at a cost of $15 billion.

As he cheered the Homer City project, Trump lamented that he could not follow through on his campaign trail promise to save the coal plant there.

But he reminded the summit audience that the rule within his administration is that coal can be referenced only as “beautiful coal.”

The gesture seems not to have infused the U.S. energy sector with the same level of enthusiasm so far — no one has announced construction of a new coal plant, only delays on retirements of existing facilities.

However, the president’s cheerleading for coal resonates with many in Pennsylvania, once the nation’s leading coal producer and still the third-highest coal-producing state.

The Keystone State is a fossil powerhouse, in fact: It was the birthplace of the modern petroleum industry and, thanks to hydrofracking technology and a massive shale formation, it is now the No. 2 natural gas producer in the nation.

It’s also the second-highest state for electricity generation and is home to the second-most productive nuclear fleet.

Any of those technologies would be fine to power a data center boom in Pennsylvania, Trump allowed, then added a dig at one of his favorite targets: wind turbines.

“They’ll be powered by maybe nuclear, maybe gas, maybe coal … they won’t be powered by wind because it doesn’t work.”

No worries: Pennsylvania is far down in the ranks of wind-powered states, cranking out only 2.7% as much as nation-leading Texas in 2023.

To round out the picture, Pennsylvania has the fourth-highest amount of carbon dioxide emissions, behind the much more populous Texas, California and Florida.