Published September 16, 2026
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What Georgia Is Spending, What Georgia Is Getting: A Statewide Data Center Report
Description
Georgia built the second-largest data center market in the United States without ever deciding to. No statewide siting law governs where the facilities go; no statewide assessment weighs their water or power draw; the one bill that would have paused the central subsidy passed both chambers in 2024 and was vetoed. This report assembles the fiscal, grid, and local records into a single account of what the build-out costs Georgia and what it returns. The sales-and-use tax exemption (O.C.G.A. § 48-8-3(68.1)) waived an estimated $450.6 million in 2024, rising toward $866.7 million by 2030, and the state's own Carl Vinson Institute evaluation found the program's net fiscal impact negative every year and revised the share of activity actually caused by the exemption from 90 percent down to 30 percent. Georgia Power's projected new-generation need rose from about 400 MW (2022) to 8,500 MW (2025), overwhelmingly attributed to data centers; the Public Service Commission certified 9,885 MW in December 2025, about 80 percent tied to data center demand and most of it gas, while residential customers absorbed six rate increases totaling about $43 a month. With the state silent, local government became the siting authority by default: by June 2026, 32 counties and 21 cities had adopted or drafted data center ordinances or moratoria. The volume tests the industry's case on its own terms and sets Georgia against Virginia and the national field. Independent and built entirely from public sources; every figure traced to a primary document.
More of the author's data center research, grouped by topic: tommynturner.com/data-centers
Notes
Version 1.1, 16 September 2026. Six statements about the December 2025 capacity certification rested on the Georgia Public Service Commission's Data Center Fact Sheet, dated March 2026, and are corrected in this version against the instruments the fact sheet summarises: the Order Adopting Stipulation, document 224953, and the Stipulation, document 224772, in Georgia PSC Docket Nos. 56298 and 56310. (1) The certified total is 9,885 MW, being 7,999 MW from the All-Source proceeding plus 1,886 MW of supplemental resources as the order states them in its recitals; the order states no combined total anywhere and the 9,985 figure is the fact sheet's. (2) The order states no percentage of any kind, so the roughly 80 percent data center share is the fact sheet's alone. (3) The 2029-2031 commitment is a revenue floor tied to how the company's next base rate case is filed, not an undertaking to absorb the capital cost of a certified plant; three Commission sources describe it as revenue. (4) Neither instrument contains a five-year remedies window or any of the four remedies the fact sheet lists, though the order does find that the stipulation provides sufficient time for remedial action if the expected contracts do not materialize in 2026. (5) The contract deadline is the end of the calendar year, not the end of the period. (6) The $8.50 per month commitment is downward pressure on a future rate case and not a delivered household saving. Notes 57, 61 and 62 now cite the order and the Stipulation by document number. This version also states what the record carries on cost: the application's certified estimate for the fourteen company-owned projects is $15.66 billion excluding allowance for funds used during construction and ad valorem tax, covering 6,804 of the certified megawatts and none of the purchase agreements, against press accounts putting the package near $16.5 billion; no total for the whole package can be computed from the public filings because the purchase agreements are certified at a table whose every cell is redacted. Version 1.0 remains available at 10.5281/zenodo.20717373 and carries an erratum recording the same six items.
Correction, October 2026. The report gives 2033 as the sunset of the O.C.G.A. § 48-8-3(68.1) data center exemption. As amended by Act 842 (HB 1291, 2022), the exemption applies through December 31, 2031, and the paragraph stands repealed by operation of law on January 1, 2032; Department of Revenue Rule 560-12-2-.117 states the same expiry for certificates of exemption. SB 410 as passed by the Senate on March 6, 2026 (LC 59 0402S) would have barred new certificates of exemption from its effective date and left existing certificates under the prior law; it set no 2032 end date. Both points will be corrected in the text at the next version.