Every AI data center needs power, and every megawatt needs people to build it. The biggest jobs story in energy right now is utilities racing to serve hyperscaler demand: new plants, new transmission, and thousands of construction and trades jobs in places that needed them most.

Here are nine utilities leading the buildout, and what it means for jobs.

Entergy | Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas

Meta is building its largest data center ever, the $10 billion Hyperion campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana, and Entergy is building everything that powers it: three combined-cycle turbines totaling 2,260 MW, eight substations, and roughly 100 miles of 500kV transmission line. The jobs math is big. Five thousand construction workers at peak on the Meta site, another 3,500 to 5,000 on Entergy’s grid buildout, and 500+ permanent jobs when it opens. One year in, Meta had already placed $875 million in contracts with Louisiana businesses, and rural Richland Parish, one of the poorest corners of the state, is the epicenter.

Next door in Mississippi, AWS is investing $25 billion, the largest capital investment in state history, and Entergy Mississippi broke ground on the $1.2 billion Delta Blues Advanced Power Station in Greenville, adding 300+ construction jobs.

The coverage: “Entergy Approved to Build New Gas Plants for Meta’s Louisiana Data Center” by Josh Saul (@joshfromalaska) and Riley Griffin (@rileyraygriffin), with Naureen S. Malik (@naurtorious) | Bloomberg

Southern Company / Georgia Power | Georgia

Georgia Power’s approved plan calls for roughly 8,500 MW of load growth through 2030, more than 1,000 miles of new transmission over ten years, and new gas units at Plants Bowen, McIntosh, and Wansley. Southern raised its five-year capital plan from $63 billion to $81 billion on data center demand, with more than 50 GW of large-load interest system-wide and 10 GW fully contracted. On the ground: Meta’s $5 billion expansion at Stanton Springs in Newton County, and the $5.18 billion Project Ruby in Columbus, bringing 195 permanent jobs at $80,000 to $120,000 salaries. Georgia is now one of the four hottest data center construction labor markets in the country.

The coverage: “Georgia Power’s new IRP keeps coal plants online to serve data centers” by Robert Walton (@TeamWetDog) | Utility Dive

Dominion Energy | Virginia

Loudoun County’s Data Center Alley is the largest data center market on earth, and it has not gone a single day without active data center construction in over 14 years. Virginia’s own legislative watchdog estimates the industry supports roughly 74,000 jobs and $9.1 billion in GDP annually in the state. AWS has pledged $35 billion in new Virginia campuses by 2040. Dominion’s answer: a $64.7 billion capital plan for 2026 to 2030, with contracted data center capacity nearly doubling to about 40 GW in just six months and roughly 100 substations in the pipeline.

The coverage: “America’s Biggest Power Grid Operator Has an AI Problem — Too Many Data Centers” by Katherine Blunt (@KatherineBlunt) and Jennifer Hiller (@Jennifer_Hiller) | The Wall Street Journal

Duke Energy | Carolinas, Indiana, Florida

Duke’s $103 billion capital plan for 2026 to 2030 is the largest in utility history, underwriting about 14 GW of new generation across its data center hubs. The marquee: Amazon’s $10 billion AI campus in Richmond County, North Carolina, the largest initial investment in state history, sited deliberately next to Duke’s 2,200 MW Smith Energy Complex in one of the state’s most economically distressed counties, with 500 permanent jobs to come. Duke has also signed first-of-their-kind clean energy acceleration agreements directly with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Nucor.

The coverage: “Amazon to invest $10 billion into AI data centers in North Carolina” by Zachery Eanes (@zeanes) | Axios

American Electric Power | Ohio, Texas, Indiana

AWS plans $23.8 billion in Ohio through 2030, Google is at $20 billion and counting, and Meta’s New Albany campus hosts its one-gigawatt Prometheus AI cluster. New Albany, a Columbus suburb, anchors a 12,000-acre business park where AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft together own more than 5,000 acres. Ohio’s data center industry supported 95,000+ jobs by 2024, per industry estimates. AEP’s capital plan has climbed from $54 billion to $78 billion, and it expects peak load to nearly double to 65 GW by 2030. In Indiana, AEP’s Indiana Michigan Power serves Amazon’s $11 billion New Carlisle campus and its roughly 1,000 local jobs.

The coverage: “AEP eyes exit from PJM, SPP over slow generation interconnection” by Ethan Howland (@ethanhowland27) | Utility Dive

FirstEnergy | Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia

FirstEnergy has proposed a 1,200 MW gas plant plus utility-scale solar, framed squarely around data center growth: more than 3,260 construction jobs and about 2,200 direct and indirect jobs in operation, on top of a $5.2 billion West Virginia investment through 2029. Contracted data center demand stands at 4.3 GW and climbing, with a 15 GW pipeline through 2035. FirstEnergy is also a partner in Valley Link, a 765kV electric superhighway joint venture with Dominion and AEP that will run roughly 415 miles of new line toward data center load.

The coverage: “FirstEnergy expects peak load to grow 45% by 2035 on data centers” by Ethan Howland (@ethanhowland27) | Utility Dive

PPL / Talen Energy | Pennsylvania

Amazon’s $20 billion Pennsylvania investment is the largest private-sector investment in state history, carrying 1,250 high-skilled jobs, and Talen’s expanded 1,920 MW nuclear agreement with Amazon at Susquehanna secures more than 900 existing plant jobs. PPL’s advanced-stage data center pipeline, 14.5 GW, now exceeds its entire current peak load. The hyperscaler era is keeping a nuclear plant’s workforce employed.

The coverage: “Talen to sell Amazon 1.9 GW from Susquehanna nuclear plant” by Ethan Howland (@ethanhowland27) | Utility Dive

Oncor / Sempra | Texas

Oncor’s company-record $47.5 billion capital plan for 2026 to 2030 is chasing an interconnection queue that reached roughly 255 GW of data center requests, about three times ERCOT’s all-time peak. With LCRA, Oncor has proposed up to 244 miles of 765kV line from the Permian Basin, where power demand is projected to more than double by 2030. The queue is so large that Texas literally cannot build fast enough.

The coverage: “Oncor, LCRA propose up to 244 miles of 765-kV Texas transmission” by Robert Walton (@TeamWetDog) | Utility Dive

NextEra Energy | Florida, Iowa, Texas, nationwide

NextEra and Google are restarting Iowa’s Duane Arnold nuclear plant, dark since 2020, by early 2029 under a 25-year power agreement: roughly 400 direct full-time jobs and more than $9 billion in economic benefits to Iowa. NextEra is also working with ExxonMobil on a 1.2 GW gas-plus-carbon-capture data center site in the Southeast, partnering with Comstock on up to 8 GW of gas generation for Central Texas data centers, and targeting up to 15 GW of data center power hubs by 2035, including campuses developed with Google. A nuclear plant that went dark five years ago is coming back to life because of AI, and bringing 400 jobs back with it.

The coverage: “NextEra aims to restart Iowa nuclear plant by early 2029” by Emma Penrod (@EmaPen) | Utility Dive

The durable story is in construction, skilled trades, grid buildout, and the supply chain, where projects run 1,000 to 5,000 workers at a time.

That’s the current buildout for the next generation of jobs. Did we miss any?