FW: Atlanta Business Chronicle: GA Power's Aaron Mitchell, Google's Katie Ottenweller, Chamber's Chris Clark, etc. talk about data center growth in Georgia
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From: Mark Woodall <woodal...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, July 6, 2026 8:34 AM
To: Neill Herring <neillh...@earthlink.net>
Subject: Atlanta Business Chronicle: GA Power's Aaron Mitchell, Google's Katie Ottenweller, Chamber's Chris Clark, etc. talk about data center growth in Georgia
Atlanta has become one of the most talked-about data center markets in the country.
Google was one of the first major players to enter the market. Since it started work in Douglas County in 2003, the company has committed more than $3 billion in investment in the state. Other hyperscalers have also invested in the metro area, and the research service Data Center Map lists 188 data centers in the region.
Amidst this growth, the Atlanta Business Chronicle recently convened a panel of business leaders to discuss the impact data centers have on the region’s economy, employment, energy affordability and reliability and water resources, as well as discuss some of the most common misconceptions. The speakers were: Georgia Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Chris Clark, Georgia Power Senior Vice President, Strategic Growth Aaron Mitchell, Google Lead of Energy Market Development for the U.S. Eastern Region Katie Ottenweller and Douglasville-Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority Executive Director Gil Shearouse.
Business Chronicle Market President & Publisher David Rubinger moderated the discussion, which is condensed and edited for clarity below.
Rubinger: Data centers can be located anywhere in the world. What is making Metro Atlanta such a robust place for companies like Google to locate?
Clark: It’s not just Atlanta; it’s the entire state of Georgia where we’re now seeing this incredible build-out.
Like most types of projects that look at Georgia and Atlanta, it’s a great business climate. There’s great talent. There’s reliable, safe and affordable energy. We’ve got the water infrastructure in place. We’ve got the workforce and talent in place. We’ve got a stable business environment that companies respond well to. And you get to be close to the centerpiece of the Southeast, which is the city of Atlanta.
Rubinger: Why should Georgia businesses that are outside of the data center world care about the fact that we have all this data center growth here?
Mitchell: Growth is good for Georgia. It’s for the benefit of the state and the benefit of the communities. At Georgia Power, we’ve always maintained that our plans and our actions are centered on our customers and focused on the current and future growth of our communities, which leads to the growth of our state. That then benefits everyone.
Rubinger: How has this infrastructure boom helped Douglas County?
Shearouse: We’ve been dealing with data centers in Douglas County for almost 20 years now, and you can see just how integrated the big ones are in the school system and the community.
Rubinger: Google has made a commitment to our community that is unique and continues to expand. How does Google view Metro Atlanta and Georgia, and why does this market seem to fit nicely with what the company is trying to accomplish globally?
Ottenweller: Google has never closed a data center that it has owned and operated. These are long-term commitments that we are making to these communities, so where we decide to make those investments is really a big decision.
A lot of factors go into that, including workforce, business climate, access to fiber and access to energy. We also look at where the community sees the value of us, whether that’s in the tax base, supporting local schools or helping to reduce property taxes. Georgia is unique in that it really has all of those assets.
Rubinger: Georgia has 159 counties. What does Google look for when it decides to choose a specific community?
Ottenweller: It’s all of the infrastructure things that you would think about. We have to be able to deliver fiber. We have to have power. For Google, where that power comes from and whether we have an opportunity to help support new clean energy as part of our sustainability commitments also are important.
We make decisions about whether we’re going to use water-cooling technologies, and so evaluating whether we can do that sustainably or not is another thing that we think about. Where we can’t do it sustainably, we don’t use it.
We also want to be in places that want to have a Google data center. Getting a chance to have conversations with those community leaders and help them understand what this is and what the potential benefits for them are is a really critical piece of deciding where to go as well.
Rubinger: How strict are your sustainability goals within Google?
Ottenweller: Google has one of the most ambitious clean-energy goals in the world of any corporate entity. We were the third-largest clean power purchaser in the world last year, according to BloombergNEF, and we are really proud of that.
We have a goal of fully powering our data center operations by 2030. That is a moonshot for our team. The grid needs to be reliable, safe and clean, and so we look at that really closely when we decide where we’re going to grow and how we can support new resources onto the grid.
Another piece of that is whether we have a strong partnership with the electric utility that serves us. We want to be confident that we are fully covering the costs of powering that data center. In Georgia, we have so much confidence about that because of Georgia Power’s leadership on this issue.
Rubinger: Throughout its history, Georgia Power has been the backbone for any industry as it comes online. What has the data center boom meant for your business?
Mitchell: Georgia Power has been meeting the growing energy needs of families and businesses in our state for more than 140 years. One thing that allows Georgia Power to separate itself from some other states and markets that aren’t having the success that Georgia has is that we are a vertically integrated and a state-regulated utility.
This vertical integration means that we plan, build, operate and maintain all the generation, all the transmission and all the distribution, bringing power all the way to the customers’ doors. We know exactly where and which piece of the system needs attention, needs expansion, needs maintenance, or needs investment. State regulation by the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) ensures that we’re being proactive and thoughtful in how we plan to meet the customer’s needs at the instant they need that electricity.
That is what has gotten us here, and that is unchanged. What is different is the speed and the scale of the growth that data centers create.
Rubinger: How do you balance the needs of residential and business customers, and what makes for a good business customer like Google?
Shearouse: It really comes down to responsible stewardship of our natural resources. We manage a finite resource. We have very limited water resources, even in the Southeast, where we get 52 inches of rainfall a year.
Water supply is also a little different from some of our other infrastructure sectors, in that we have to plan really long-term in the water supply business. It takes decades to develop water resources, especially water supply reservoirs. We work on a 50-year planning horizon because it does take a couple of decades just to get one started. As an example, here in Douglas County, we’re one year into the construction of a reservoir expansion, but we started the planning for that in the early 2010s.
One of the interesting things about data centers, and especially AI, is that some of these businesses didn’t even exist when we did our last water system master plan. While we have these long-term plans, we also have to be nimble enough to update them and pivot when things change. We have to be able to balance those needs of the community with the resources that we have available to us and then put the infrastructure in to meet those needs.
Rubinger: When you have a new customer coming on with significant needs, how do you approach that conversation about balancing their needs with those of the larger community?
Shearouse: From a pure resource standpoint, if we don’t have it available, it’s an easy no, or, as in Google’s case in Douglas County, it’s an easy, “Hey, we need to pivot here. We need to look at a different resource. How can we provide for your needs, maybe in a different way?”
It goes back to the question: Does the community want this project? As a water provider, my job is not to speak for the community. That’s the elected officials’ job. There are ways that the community’s voice gets heard, and the community needs to decide whether we want those projects or not.
As a water provider, our job is to support the needs of the community. If the community says, “Yes, we want that,” then we provide input to those decision makers at the community level.
Mitchell: We are required by state law, and with oversight by the Georgia PSC, to serve customers in our service territory. That means that when Google, or another large user, comes and asks us for electric service, we must be ready to reasonably serve them and be able to preserve reliability and affordability for all of our customers.
Going back to our market structure and what makes Georgia different. We have worked with the Georgia PSC to refine our rules and regulations, and we have upped the requirements for information earlier in a project cycle, just because of the size of these new customers and data centers. We ask very detailed questions about the type of electrical load and how fast you are going to bring that load online. And then we have to collaborate every step of the way, so that we can maintain the reliability of the system and meet those customers’ needs.
We’ve really updated those new procedures over the last two years. Google has been an outstanding partner in working with us, flexible and willing to adapt to changes that need to be made to align with our process, even as they are operating their business. They understand that we have a mutual goal of growing business in this state, and keeping electricity reliable and affordable.
Rubinger: How does Google interact with communities to build support as you put these critical infrastructure needs into a place like Douglas County?
Ottenweller: Douglas County is a great example of where there were limitations in terms of available water at that site. We were able to partner and say, well, okay, what if we took gray water and actually created a wastewater treatment facility on-site at the data center, and then we put that water into the Chattahoochee River cleaner than we got it? Would that be a good solution?
That requires long-term investment, but mostly requires partnership. When we run into these constraints, it creates opportunity for innovation where we can have a conversation with our utility providers and with the community and say, “Is there something innovative that we could do that would create a net benefit to the community and also allow us to continue to grow so that we can offer these products and services that the people who use our services are asking for?”
It’s similar in the energy space. As this load growth happened so quickly in Georgia, I think it was an opportunity to say, “How do we make sure that those safeguards are in place?” Georgia Power has been so great in leading that. It gives us so much confidence when we go to communities and tell them we’re building data centers the right way and fully covering our costs.
Rubinger: How do you see this type of work leading to further growth for our state?
Clark: There are probably three dozen-plus communities in Georgia that would love to have a data center. They’ve got the resources there, but they’ve also got other issues that data centers make sense for them. Maybe they don’t have as many workers, and so they can’t handle a 5,000-job manufacturing plant, but they can handle 300 jobs for a data center. Maybe they’re an aging community like the one that I live in, where a data center is going to bring in much-needed tax relief to buoy the entire community and pay for everything for the next 50 to 100 years.
That’s one of the reasons we announced a few weeks ago that we’re launching the Digital Infrastructure Alliance and the Georgia Chamber’s Data Center Ready Community Designations this summer, so the communities can understand, here’s what I need to do if I want to be competitive in the future for these projects. Here’s how I can make sure I can check the box and make sure I have the resources and the right zoning.
The macro point of this is a much deeper dive into the future. For the last 300 years, businesses have thrived and done well when they’ve been connected to infrastructure. Maybe that was the Port of Savannah to bring in goods and products, its roads, railroads, airports, energy connectivity and fiber.
Data centers are now the infrastructure of the future. The economy is not driven by oil anymore. It’s driven by data. Companies desperately need to be connected to quality, safe, reliable data centers where they can have confidence that they’re protected.
Rubinger: What is the biggest misconception about data centers?
Clark: One of the things that I get frustrated as I’m out talking to communities around the state is that so many people think that this is all about AI and artificial intelligence, and it’s really not. It’s about data. Every time you take a picture and put a post up, you’re using data. Every business transaction is data. Every time you order online, it’s data.
Also, people think the cloud is something that just kind of hangs over Stone Mountain somewhere. It’s all physical infrastructure. It has to be in a building on a chip, on a hard drive, somewhere connected.
Ottenweller: I’ll second that. Data centers really are the backbone of the internet. Data centers use about 4% of U.S. electricity, but they help generate about 18% of U.S. economic activity. The U.S. data center industry drove 92% of all U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025.
If our economy is growing, it is because data centers are helping to provide that.
Shearouse: The biggest misconception that I hear is that all data centers use a colossal amount of water. Most don’t. Most use less water than any other business that would be on that footprint, less than the number of homes that would go on that size of tract.
Those that do use water for cooling are very responsible with their resource use. They want to be good stewards, just like we do. They want to fit in well with the communities in which they exist. Plus, when it comes to rates, if anything, the large users are actually subsidizing the rates of the small users and residential customers, not the other way around.
Mitchell: From our perspective, I think the biggest misconception that is out there is that these large data centers will cause consumer electricity rates to go up. And while, unfortunately, I think there may be some markets in the United States where that might occur if not managed properly, it is emphatically untrue here in Georgia.
With the approval and oversight of the Georgia PSC, we are structuring our contracts with large load customers, like data centers, so that they’re required to pay 100% of their local infrastructure up front. There is zero risk that those costs could be shared by another customer. In addition, our contracts are 15-plus years, securing revenue that is more than sufficient to recover the costs that we invest in the system to serve these large customers.
This growth and strategy has allowed us to freeze base rates through the end of 2028. So, while our investments in the system are growing, rates are stable. We will not increase those rates. In addition, as we are adding 10,000 megawatts of new generation to the system, we’re going to provide $1.6 billion of savings to customers over the 2029 through 2031 timeframe – or more than $100 per year for the typical residential customer. These actions demonstrate that our market structure enables support of a growing Georgia while benefiting all customers.
Rubinger: There also is a perception that data centers take up a vast amount of space, but don’t necessarily create the labor for a community that helps benefit that community. What is Google’s view on that?
Ottenweller: For every job that’s created directly at a Google data center, nearly nine additional jobs are generated in the wider community. There is a catalyzing function that these data centers have in communities. Electricians are a great example of that. Construction is another really significant labor pool that we’re seeing in real time here in Georgia.
Because of that, Google invests significantly in workforce development, not just for folks who are working on-site, but also because the broader ecosystem is so important to our business growth and to the communities where we are calling home. We engage in a lot of STEM activities with local schools and work closely with partners such as the Electrical Training Alliance Program. This is about equipping the next generation of folks to be able to participate and benefit from all of these technological changes that we’re seeing.
A single data center can generate millions of dollars in tax revenue that often goes directly to funding local schools, fire departments and parks. In a lot of these places, we’ve become the biggest contributor to the tax base because of the large amount of investment that’s going into these communities.