Sam White turns climate tech ideas into scalable businesses. A co-founder of Greentown Labs, he has scaled thermal battery, cooling, and recycling ventures across global markets. Now leading GreenLabs Recycling, he drives circular manufacturing through problem-led innovation, strong partnerships, anchor customers, and teams built for durable growth.
Jeff Pratt is Vice President of Emerging Technologies at Oglethorpe Power, one of the nation’s largest power supply cooperatives and a leading energy producer in Georgia. He supports a diverse resource portfolio delivering reliable, affordable, safe and environmentally responsible power to 38 consumer-owned EMCs serving approximately 4.7 million Georgians statewide through innovation and emerging leadership.
Stephanie Gossman is Planning and Policy General Manager at Georgia Power, where she leads efforts to prepare the future grid through customer growth planning, generation interconnection and grid standards. With deep experience in transmission engineering, grid transformation and electric transportation, she drives reliable infrastructure solutions that support evolving customer needs and long-term system resilience across Georgia.
Richard is a Principal at Quadrant-i, catalyzing new energy/cleantech companies anchored in Georgia Tech IP, and a Senior Fellow at the Strategic Energy Institute. He co-founded Merit SI, partnered with Turner Enterprises on two successful cleantech companies, served as V.P. Project Development at First Solar, and in leadership at ERCOT ISO.
Ben Heininger is an energy and infrastructure specialist focused on data center strategy and energy users. He advises investors and corporates on interconnection, on-site generation, procurement, and decarbonization.
Based in New York, he works across North America and Europe on power, gas, and low carbon infrastructure strategy and transactions.
The panel explored how the Super South can deliver clean power at the scale required by rapid load growth, especially from data centers and large industrial customers. Participants discussed utility planning, interconnection, renewable procurement, batteries, geothermal, nuclear, customer contracts, affordability and reliability.
The central tension was clear: the region must move faster while still protecting existing customers, maintaining grid quality and preparing for technologies that are promising but not yet fully proven.
Clean Power at Scale Requires Planning Discipline
The participants emphasized that rapid growth cannot be handled through improvisation. Utility planning processes, integrated resource plans, public review and long-term forecasts were described as essential because large loads affect generation, transmission, distribution and customer rates. The deeper insight is that speed matters but speed without disciplined planning can create reliability, affordability and process risks. Existing processes may need to evolve but they cannot simply be bypassed.
The panel treated flexibility as an important tool for integrating large loads but not as a universal solution. Flexible loads may deserve priority when they can help the grid, yet participants also warned that optionality creates planning risk. Data centers may want the ability to scale, pause or exit but utilities must still protect all customers from stranded costs. The caveat is that flexibility must be defined clearly through contracts, technical requirements and operational commitments.
Large Customers Must Pay Their Fair Share
A major theme was affordability for existing customers. Participants discussed minimum contract terms, minimum bill requirements and commission review as ways to ensure that large load customers contribute to the infrastructure built to serve them. This matters because data center growth can help lower system costs only if revenues materialize as expected. The subtle point is that growth can benefit residential and existing customers but only when cost allocation is structured carefully.
The discussion acknowledged that some large customers are prioritizing getting online quickly over immediate clean energy procurement. Participants did not frame this as permanent abandonment of sustainability goals. Instead, they suggested that clean energy commitments may return more strongly after near-term bridge power challenges are solved. The caveat is that this creates reputational and emissions questions in the short term, especially when temporary fossil-based solutions are used.
Technology Innovation is Necessary but Bankability Determines Scale
Participants discussed geothermal, long-duration storage, nuclear, batteries and hybrid renewable systems. The shared view was that innovation is accelerating but technologies must eventually prove reliability, cost effectiveness, financeability and regulatory acceptance. Nuclear offered a clear example: many designs may exist but only a few are likely to survive approval, supply chain challenges, workforce constraints and project finance scrutiny. The lesson is that technical promise is not the same as deployable scale.
Data Center Scale Reflects Both Economics and Speed
The panel explained that large data center campuses are driven by economies of scale, site control, permitting, power commitments and market urgency. Smaller or distributed facilities may emerge but current customer demand is often for very large sites with rapid access to power. The key insight is that data center location decisions are shaped by where utilities can provide certainty. The Super South’s opportunity depends on matching speed to power with reliability and affordability.
Participants identified data center demand as a potential catalyst for long-needed grid upgrades. The grid already needs modernization and load growth creates a revenue opportunity to fund smarter infrastructure, better monitoring and more advanced technologies. The caveat is that this only works if new large loads remain on the system and pay under contracts that recover costs. Otherwise, growth could create stranded assets or rate pressure.
Reliability Now Includes Power Quality and Technical Behavior
The discussion went beyond whether enough energy exists. Participants raised issues such as harmonics, load signatures, backup power, technical data and operating requirements for large loads. This is an important nuance: a data center is not only a large customer. It introduces new dynamics that must be modeled and managed so it does not affect other customers on the grid. Clean power at scale therefore requires electrical quality, not just energy quantity.
The presentation framed clean power at scale as a balancing act between growth, reliability, affordability and innovation. Participants agreed that the Super South has a major opportunity but must manage it through disciplined planning, fair cost allocation, customer collaboration and realistic technology deployment. The session showed that the clean energy transition will be shaped as much by contracts, regulation and system operations as by generation technologies themselves.
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