December 22, 2025
AI-powered applications are rapidly becoming embedded in daily life, and Americans are adapting to new AI-driven use cases far faster than expected.
According to a recent Associated Press–NORC poll, 60% of Americans say they use AI to find information at least some of the time. Separate research from Pew shows that 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, nearly doubling in two years. ChatGPT usage is highest among younger adults: 58% of adults under 30 have used it, up from 33% in 2023. Among all adults, 28% have used it for work, 26% to learn something new, and 22% for entertainment.
AI is delivering meaningful improvements across daily life and the economy. From finding the perfect Christmas gift to speeding up software development, AI is making its way into the tools we use every day. In business, generative AI is acting as a force multiplier for knowledge work — speeding up content creation, summarization, analysis, and coding while enabling new creative and visual design capabilities for smaller teams. AI is also enhancing accessibility through translation, speech-to-text, optical character recognition, and multimodal assistive tools.
Even as policymakers debate what guardrails are needed to ensure a safe transition to an AI-enabled society, one thing is clear: AI applications are changing how we interact with information, digital assets, and even the physical world. The potential for economic growth and societal benefit is enormous.
Powering the AI Transition
But this growth needs power — a lot of it. Even “smaller” data centers routinely require 10–50 MW, an energy footprint that would have been considered mid-scale only a few years ago.
After decades of relatively flat demand, U.S. utilities and regulators are struggling to integrate massive new loads. Interconnection queues are years long, capital plans are strained by uncertainty, and regulators increasingly find themselves in the position of delaying or denying projects simply because grid capacity can’t be added fast enough. Where it can, the traditional utility capex model of socializing the cost over all ratepayers is pushing up prices for everyone.
There’s a better approach — one my colleague Thomas Folker outlined in the first post in this series.
Utilities can use virtual power plants (VPPs) to accelerate new, mid-sized data-center development. By aggregating flexible distributed energy resources (DERs) — commercial buildings, batteries, EV chargers, industrial assets, and smart homes — utilities can offset the incremental capacity normally required before approving a new data-center interconnection. And they can do so via targeted incentives for enrolling those specific DERs, as opposed to spreading the cost of new utility infrastructure across all ratepayers.
This “virtual interconnection” model is fast, cost-effective, and clean. And because DERs are already connected to the grid (or planned to be connected), utilities can often delay or avoid traditional infrastructure upgrades. The result: utilities can unlock economic development without needing to raise capital for new generation or transmission.
Saying Yes to Growth Without Burdening Ratepayers
Identifying a faster, cheaper way for meeting new energy demand is urgently important.
Electricity prices in the U.S. have risen 6.7% over the last year, according to EIA tracking, with many states seeing double-digit increases, some exceeding 20%. Rising power bills have shaped recent elections, including the 2025 gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, where electricity costs emerged as defining campaign issues.
To be clear: AI and data-center demand are part of what’s driving higher system costs, alongside electrification, weather-driven load extremes, wildfire mitigation, and the need for more grid resilience. But that doesn’t mean ratepayers must absorb the full cost of scaling the grid to support economic growth.
A better path is emerging: Match the buyers of new capacity (data-center developers) with sellers (VPP aggregators and flexible DER owners).
Developers have strong incentives — and the capital — to move quickly. VPPs give utilities a tool to approve growth without placing new financial burdens on existing customers.
The Opportunity in Front of Utilities
The energy system is changing faster than traditional planning cycles can handle. That doesn’t have to be a constraint. VPPs are proven solutions that give utilities immediate access to flexible, dispatchable resources that already exist on their grids.
Instead of waiting years for new generation or upgrades, utilities can lean on VPP aggregators to assemble the exact portfolio of DERs needed to support new data-center load — and do it in months, not years.
For developers, this means a real pathway to faster interconnection.
For utilities, a way to say “yes” to economic growth without taking on new capital burdens.
For communities, a grid that stays reliable and affordable.
Leap exists to make this matching possible — leveraging clean technologies to unlock growth, accelerate innovation, and help utilities move at the speed of the moment.
