Amazon to spend $20B on data centers in Pennsylvania, including one next to a nuclear power plant

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Amazon said Monday that it will spend $20 billion on two data center complexes in Pennsylvania, including one it is building alongside a nuclear power plant that has drawn federal scrutiny over an arrangement to essentially plug right into the power plant.

Kevin Miller, vice president of global data centers at Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, told The Associated Press that the company will build another data center complex just north of Philadelphia.

One data center is being built next to northeastern Pennsylvania's Susquehanna nuclear power plant, where it intends to get its power. The other will be in Fairless Hills at a logistics campus, the Keystone Trade Center, on what was once a U.S. Steel mill. Amazon said that data center will get its power through the electricity grid.

At a news conference in Berwick in the shadow of the power plant, Gov. Josh Shapiro called it the largest private sector investment in Pennsylvania's history. Monday’s announcement, he said, is “just the beginning” because his administration is working with Amazon on additional data center projects in Pennsylvania.

While critics say data centers employ relatively few people and pack little long-term job-creation punch, their advocates say they require a huge number of construction jobs to build, spend enormous sums at area vendors and generate strong tax revenues for local governments.

Shapiro touted the work that will keep construction trades members busy building Amazon's data centers, the tech jobs that will be waiting for graduates of area colleges and the millions of dollars in property taxes that will flow to schools and local governments.

“For too long, we’ve watched as talents across Pennsylvania got hollowed out and left behind,” Shapiro said at the news conference. “No more. Now is our time to rebuild those communities and invest in them. This investment in Pennsylvania starts reversing that trend.”

Pennsylvania will provide possibly tens of millions of dollars in incentives, typically a key element of data center deals as states compete for the large installations they hope will be an economic bonanza.

Shapiro's administration said it will spend $10 million to pay for training classes and facilities at schools, community colleges and union halls to meet the skills demand for the data centers.

Amazon also will qualify for Pennsylvania’s existing sales tax exemption on purchases of data center equipment, such as servers and routers, an exemption that most states offer and that is viewed as a must-have for a state to compete.

The announcements add to the billions of dollars in Big Tech's data center cash flowing into the state.

Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products.

The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has meanwhile fueled demand for energy-hungry data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems.

The majority owner of the Susquehanna nuclear power plant, Talen Energy, last year sold its data center and land adjacent to the plant to Amazon for $650 million in a deal to eventually provide 960 megawatts of electricity, likely at a premium. That's 40% of the output of one of the nation's largest nuclear power plants, or enough to power more than a half-million homes.

Amazon is effectively gutting that data center and building its own, larger facility on the land.

However, the power-supply arrangement between Talen and Amazon — called a “behind the meter” connection — has been held up by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the first such case to come before the agency.

For Big Tech, plugging data centers directly into a power plant can take years off their development timelines and is a much faster route to procuring power than connecting to the congested electricity grid.

But it has raised questions over whether diverting power to higher-paying customers will leave enough for others and whether it’s fair to excuse big power users from paying fees to improve the grid.

It’s not clear when FERC, which blocked the deal on a procedural grounds, will decide the matter.

Already in Pennsylvania, Microsoft has a deal with the owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to restart a reactor under a 20-year agreement to supply its data centers in four states with energy.

Meanwhile, the owners of what was once Pennsylvania’s biggest coal-fired power plant say they will turn it into a $10 billion natural gas-powered data center campus.

Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter.

A sign is displayed at the entrance of the Keystone Trade Center in Morrisville, Pa., Monday, June 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

FILE - A data center owned by Amazon Web Services, front right, is under construction next to the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Berwick, Pa., on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, file)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Portugal and Austria defeated Germany for seats on the powerful but deeply divided U.N. Security Council on Wednesday in a hotly contested race after intense campaigning.

The 10 rotating seats on the 15-member Security Council are earmarked for different regions of the world. The assembly elects five countries by secret ballot every year to serve two-year terms alongside the council’s five permanent veto-wielding members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

In the other contested race, after four rounds of voting in the 193-member General Assembly, Kyrgyzstan defeated the Philippines by a vote of 143-49 and will join the council for the first time.

Zimbabwe, the African candidate, and Caribbean candidate Trinidad and Tobago had no opponents and both were elected with more than 180 votes.

In the race for the two seats for the group of mainly Western nations, Portugal received 134 votes and Austria 131 votes, while Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse which had served six previous terms on the council, received 104 votes.

Austria’s foreign ministry said its election capped a 15-year campaign and is a “strong international sign of confidence” in the country.

The five new members will take up their seats on Jan. 1. They will replace Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia.

The Security Council is mandated under the U.N. Charter with ensuring international peace and security, but it has failed in the three major current conflicts because of the veto power of Russia on Ukraine and of the United States, Israel’s closest ally, often on Gaza and on Iran.

There have been decades of efforts to reform the Security Council to reflect the geopolitical realities of the current world, not of the post-World War II era 80 years ago, when the United Nations was established. But they have all failed, though a new attempt is underway.

Associated Press writer Stephanie Liechtenstein in Vienna, Austria contributed to this report.

FILE - The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building, Feb. 28, 2022, at United Nations Headquarters. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)