By Data Center Infrastructure News & Events · Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 5 min read

Georgia's Governor's Race Splits Over Who Pays for the Next Data Center

Original illustration created for Data Center Infrastructure News & Events.

What the 100-Megawatt Line Actually Does

Under the January 2025 rule, large-load customers crossing the threshold must cover "upstream generation, transmission and distribution" costs tied to their own demand, rather than spreading those costs across the customer base. PSC Chairman Jason Shaw said the rule was built to "protect ratepayers from cost shifting" and to make sure existing customers are "spared additional costs" tied to the industry's consumption. Since February 2025, Georgia Power's contracts with large customers above that threshold have required financial guarantees and minimum monthly payments over terms running as long as 15 years, and an April 2026 "Customer Identified Resource" program lets large customers fund their own generation projects in exchange for bill credits, according to The Compute Law Briefs — the only outlet reporting those contract terms and the program's structure, which this desk has not independently confirmed against a Georgia Power or PSC filing. The same report attributes the regulatory buildout to a large-load demand forecast that moved from 400 megawatts to 8,500 megawatts in under three years.

The commission backed that forecast with capital. On December 21, 2025, it approved a $16.3 billion build-out of new generation capacity, with 80% of the output earmarked for data centers, CBS News Atlanta reported. Georgia Power CEO Kim Greene told the commission that "large energy users are paying more so families... can pay less." Incoming Democratic commissioners Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson argued ratepayers would be left "holding the bag" if the projected demand failed to materialize. The vote passed 5-0 anyway.

What the rule does not touch is anything under 100 megawatts. A project sized below that line never triggers a customized contract, never signs the financial guarantees, and never shows up in the PSC's cost-allocation framework at all. For those projects, the only guardrail left standing is whatever the host county decides to do with its own incentive authority.

Fulton County Closes Its Own Door

Fulton County's Board of Commissioners approved a resolution formally opposing property tax abatements for data center projects, according to the county government's record of the vote. Sponsored by Commissioners Bridget Thorne and Bob Ellis, the resolution urges the Development Authority of Fulton County to decline future incentives, citing "water and power use, noise and traffic," and argues local taxpayers should not "subsidize some of the wealthiest companies in the world."

Fulton's resolution is local policy, not state law — the DAFC can still grant abatements if it chooses, and the state sales tax exemption on data center equipment, extended through 2031, is untouched by anything Fulton County voted on.

The Legislature Keeps Splitting the Same Way

Governor Brian Kemp vetoed HB 1192 in May 2024, a bill that would have suspended the state sales tax exemption on data center equipment. Kemp argued the bill's "abrupt July 1, 2024, deadline" would undermine operators who had relied on the 2022 extension of that exemption through 2031. Capitol Beat News Service reported the veto was backed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and opposed by Republican legislative leaders, the same lawmakers who had pushed the suspension bill on grid-strain grounds.

Two years later, the Georgia Senate passed SB 410 on Crossover Day in March 2026, repealing the same exemptions through 2028 and 2031 and adding language meant to protect consumers from infrastructure costs tied to the facilities. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described the vote as reflecting growing pushback against what critics call an "unnecessary giveaway." The month before, State Senator Jaha Howard introduced SB 436, proposing a one-year pause on new data center tax exemptions and a ban on local governments signing nondisclosure agreements covering a project's electricity or water use. "The rapid growth of data centers is increasingly driving up costs for families," Howard said in the Georgia Senate Press Office's release announcing the bill.

Attorney General Chris Carr has turned a Butts County mixed-use development — a project that includes a hospital and commercial space and has been linked to Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones — into a line in his 2026 primary campaign against Jones. Carr's platform, summarized by AJC.com in April 2026, centers on "affordability" and avoiding "extraordinary financial obligations" on families. Neither candidate has proposed ending the incentive structure Fulton County just rejected locally; the fight is over who controls it, and the bundle reviewed here has nothing on the Butts County project's power draw or water commitments to say whether it falls inside or outside the PSC's threshold.

One Rate Floor, One Patchwork of Local Votes

Georgia now runs two separate guardrail systems at once: a rate structure the PSC built that keeps large-load costs off residential bills once a project crosses 100 megawatts, and a county-by-county fight over whether local tax abatements should exist at all, with Fulton County having just answered that question for itself. A project under 100 megawatts clears the PSC's framework without ever signing a customized contract, which leaves a county's own incentive policy — abatement or no abatement, NDA or disclosure — as the only lever it controls directly. That is the calculation the next county facing a sub-threshold proposal will have to make on its own, with no PSC contract and no DAFC-style resolution yet on the books to guide it.

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