In a December 6th commentary, Gordon Tomb, a senior fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, argued Pennsylvania must weaken environmental and energy regulations to attract data centers. It’s a familiar but flawed premise: that regulation is inherently anti-growth and that renewable energy requirements undermine reliability and competitiveness. It misrepresents both the realities of modern data-center development, and the economic and energy challenges Pennsylvania actually faces.

Tomb treats data centers as uniquely vulnerable to oversight, as if they will flee at the first sign of public accountability. In reality, data centers are among the most resource-intensive facilities in the modern economy. They consume enormous amounts of electricity and water, place heavy demands on transmission infrastructure, and often receive substantial public subsidies. Expecting efficiency standards, transparency, and long-term planning from such operations is not “throttling development” – it is responsible governance.

Tomb invokes Pennsylvania’s “164,000 regulations” as evidence of an anti-business climate. But raw regulatory counts are meaningless. What matters is regulatory quality, predictability, and alignment with public costs. States that consistently attract data centers–Virginia, California, Washington–are also highly regulated. They succeed because they provide skilled workforces, modern infrastructure, and stable rules, not because they offer regulatory free-for-alls.

Data center operators routinely emphasize predictability over permissiveness. Unchecked growth that strains the grid, drives up electricity prices, or forces emergency interventions is far more damaging to investment than clear standards adopted early. Lawmakers proposing guardrails are attempting to prevent precisely the instability that a laissez-faire approach would invite.

Tomb also claims energy-efficiency standards are unnecessary because the profit motive alone ensures prudent resource use. That argument ignores a basic economic reality: markets don’t automatically price externalities. Data centers don’t pay the full costs of grid upgrades, water depletion, pollution, or reliability risks. Those are shifted to ratepayers and taxpayers. Efficiency standards exist because the profit motive, by itself, repeatedly fails to protect the public from bearing private costs.

The essay’s sharpest misrepresentation concerns renewable energy. Tomb claims that renewable mandates have raised electricity prices and weakened grid reliability while fossil fuels remain “practical” and dependable. In fact, wind and utility-scale solar are now among the lowest-cost sources of new electricity generation. Rising electricity prices are driven primarily by fuel volatility, aging infrastructure, transmission constraints, and extreme weather–not renewable portfolio standards.

Grid fragility is not caused by renewables. Pennsylvania’s vulnerabilities stem largely from overreliance on centralized fossil infrastructure, much of it aging and exposed to supply disruptions. Modern grid resilience increasingly depends on diversified generation, demand management, storage, and distributed resources–the very tools Tomb dismisses. Data center operators increasingly seek renewable power because long-term clean energy contracts offer price stability that fossil fuels cannot.

Tomb cites $700 million in Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards compliance costs without acknowledging the broader context. He ignores avoided fuel costs, public-health benefits from reduced pollution, job creation, and long-term price stabilization. No serious infrastructure policy is judged solely by compliance costs. Pennsylvania’s renewable standards are modest by national benchmarks; the real risk is falling behind states that are modernizing faster.

The essay also leans heavily on rankings from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that prioritizes low taxes and minimal regulation while ignoring infrastructure quality, resilience, and long-term risk. Arizona’s high rankings do not reflect a regulatory success story so much as a warning about unchecked growth colliding with water scarcity, heat stress, and grid overload–precisely the problems Pennsylvania should seek to avoid.

Calls for “energy dominance” further reveal an outdated fossil-centric worldview that confuses extraction with strength. True competitiveness today means affordability, resilience, and adaptability. Requiring large data centers to source a portion of their energy from renewables is not ideological “market meddling”; it is a rational response to facilities that will dramatically increase demand and must help support long-term supply solutions.

Pennsylvania does not face a choice between growth and regulation. The real choice is between responsible, planned development and reactive crisis management required when unchecked expansion overwhelms public systems. Data centers are not ordinary businesses. Their impacts must be addressed upfront.

Pennsylvania’s economic future will not be secured by weakening standards or clinging to 20th-century energy models. It will be secured by aligning investment with the public interest, modernizing the grid, diversifying energy sources, and ensuring that prosperity does not come at the expense of reliability, affordability, or accountability. That is not overregulation. It is prudent stewardship.

The soaring energy demands for data centers are already driving up consumer electric rates. At a minimum, Pennsylvania (and every state) should require the very wealthy backers of such projects to pay for their own energy production and not rely on the public grid. No wonder AI backers today are fighting against regulation of any kind. They want us to help pay for it while they reap the profits.

Douglas Webster is a retired marketing communications consultant and author of the Substack Blog I Beg to Differ (ibegtodiffer.substack.com) He lives in Monroeville. He has written extensively on the challenges of Artificial Intelligence.