DOE and NextEra Target $100B Gas-Powered Data Center Campus on Kentucky Federal Land
The Paducah project, backed by NextEra and Brookfield, revives a former uranium enrichment site weeks after the world's largest proposed data center campus collapsed in Virginia.
The U.S. Department of Energy and a coalition of energy, infrastructure and utility companies, including NextEra Energy and Brookfield, announced on Thursday (2026-07-31) a gas-powered data center campus at a former federal uranium enrichment site in Paducah, Kentucky. The targeted investment is $100 billion.6
The announcement arrived weeks after a strikingly similar project disintegrated in Virginia. Blackstone-owned QTS Realty Trust withdrew its appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court on July 2 (2026-07-02), closing a three-year legal fight over the Prince William Digital Gateway, a planned 2,100-acre campus in Prince William County that carried an estimated $100 billion price tag at full build-out. It would have been the largest data center complex in the world.3
Brookfield's fingerprints are on both projects. Brookfield-backed Compass Datacenters was a co-developer of the Prince William campus and dropped its own appeal in April (2026-04). Prince William County's supervisors spent nearly $2 million in taxpayer funds defending the project before also withdrawing from the litigation that month.3
But Blackstone is not retreating from data centers. The firm still manages a global portfolio worth more than $150 billion and in May (2026-05) raised $1.75 billion by listing Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust on the NYSE. In the same period, it agreed to hand Digital Realty full ownership of three built-and-leased Northern Virginia data centers in a deal valuing those assets at $7.8 billion, settled for $3.5 billion in cash and stock.3
A former federal site in Kentucky presents a different regulatory path from the county-level zoning battles that ended the Prince William project. A Gallup survey released in May (2026-05) found 71% of Americans oppose data center construction in their area, with 48% strongly opposed, running higher than opposition to a local nuclear plant. Federal land reduces exposure to those fights, though it introduces its own environmental review processes.3
NextEra's role in Paducah sits alongside a larger bet on utility-scale power. On May 18, 2026, the company agreed to acquire Virginia's Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at nearly $67 billion, creating what would be the largest regulated electric utility in the world, with a combined market capitalization of $249 billion and an enterprise value of $420 billion.1,2
Markets parsed the scale cautiously. Dominion shares surged more than 9% to around $76 per share on announcement, while NextEra dipped over 4%. Analysts tied the market's reaction to the ambition of the deal, which eclipses BlackRock's $33.4 billion acquisition of AES and Constellation Energy's $26.6 billion purchase of Calpine.1
Demand for utility commitments to serve data center load continues to accelerate. FirstEnergy's utilities held contracts to serve 6.4 gigawatts of data center load by 2035 at the end of the second quarter, up 50% from the first quarter. Brian Tierney, FirstEnergy's chairman, president and CEO, said on Wednesday (2026-07-29) during an earnings call that the company expected to sign agreements covering another 1.5 GW within two weeks.5
Gas generation for data centers is drawing regulatory pushback. Wisconsin regulators are examining proposals for two new gas plants; if approved, We Energies plans to acquire both outright to serve hyperscale campuses, including a Microsoft site and a Vantage project leased to OpenAI and Oracle. Maria Chavez, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Utility Dive that by the time a utility must demonstrate public need, "there's already a gas plant set for construction."4
NYMEX Henry Hub front-month was at $2.76 per MMBtu on Monday (2026-08-03), down 0.36% on the session. Low gas prices ease fuel-cost economics for a gas-powered campus but do not resolve the permitting questions ahead. The approval timeline for the Paducah campus, specifically whether federal land status accelerates or complicates the process, is the first concrete signal to watch.6,4