Gov. Josh Shapiro said Pennsylvania’s data center boom will rely on a mix of nuclear energy and natural gas — a strategy he called “environmentally sustainable” at the 2025 AI Horizons Summit in Bakery Square on Thursday.
When asked about what his office was doing to balance environmental protections with the push to develop more data centers in Pennsylvania, Shapiro pointed to the collaborative work his administration has done to restore Three Mile Island, which would provide nuclear energy for data centers.
“I want to make sure that we’re using as much clean energy as possible,” Shapiro told Technical.ly at a press conference after his panel discussion. “We think the ability to convert old coal-fire power plants utilizing natural gas, like in Homer City, creates opportunity for new energy to come online … and it’s something that I think is environmentally sustainable.”
Right outside the doors of the summit, environmental activists protested the use of fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, to power data centers developed for AI. While natural gas is often cited as a cleaner alternative to coal, it is still a fossil fuel that releases greenhouse gases.
“I live in the most heavily fracked county in the state, Washington County,” said Lois Bower-Bjornson, the Southwestern Pennsylvania field organizer with Clean Air Council and the host of Frackland Tours, “We don’t have a seat at the table. All this is being done and no community members from Washington County who are impacted by feedstock for the AI centers are here, so we need to be in the room.”
Energy leadership from global nuclear power supplier Westinghouse and EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the US, were present at the summit. Both companies have committed billions to powering data centers through nuclear energy and natural gas, respectively.
Pennsylvania’s AI pilot expanding to more employees
AI will also play a bigger role in the day-to-day work of Pennsylvania public employees moving forward.
The commonwealth’s generative AI pilot program will soon expand to all qualified state employees, Shapiro announced at the summit. State employees saved an average of 95 minutes of work per day by using ChatGPT to write, summarize and research, according to the governor’s office.
The pilot was initially used by Pennsylvania employees in HR, IT, policy and program management roles, but now all “qualified” state employees can use AI, too, Shapiro said. He did not clarify which employees would be considered qualified.
Those employees will now have access to both ChatGPT Enterprise and Microsoft CoPilot Chat.
Today’s announcement builds on the bipartisan momentum around AI this year.
Shapiro spoke at Senator David McCormick’s AI and Energy Summit in July, where they announced $90 billion in corporate pledges in Pennsylvania energy and data center development.
“Folks shouldn’t fear AI,” Shapiro said at the summit. “We can do big things with these tools and deploy these tools in responsible ways.”
