As the second-largest net provider of energy to other states and home to a number of top-level research universities, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned to lead the economic transformation stimulated by the increase in data center use and construction, advances in artificial intelligence technology and adoption, and necessary energy innovation, says Team PA, the Commonwealth’s nonpartisan, nonprofit partner in economic development. To drive this home, Team PA has developed a strategic roadmap that brings together the multiple resources, deep levels of expertise, and public-private collaborations that currently exist within the Commonwealth to enable growth across Pennsylvania. The plan offers a framework that can lead to economic and technical leadership, the organization says.
More and more companies, industries, and people are using AI, creating a demand for a greater number of data centers and for increasing amounts of energy production and distribution. These demands are accelerating quickly, and Team PA has pulled together partnerships from all areas of the Commonwealth to envision pathways to meeting these demands through policy, markets, and infrastructure systems. Among these partnerships are higher education institutions located throughout the Commonwealth, including Lehigh University, Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State University, Villanova University, and University of Pittsburgh.
Educational institutions are crucial to Pennsylvania’s future energy growth and the nation’s ability to satisfy the increasing demands from data centers, manufacturing, and residents. Shalinee Kishore, Director of the Center for Advancing Community Electrification Solutions (ACES) and Iacocca Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Lehigh University, says, “This roadmap matters for research universities and directs how they can leverage their complementary expertise and workforce training in AI and energy to make Pennsylvania the center of innovation.” ACES will convene a symposium in this area on Lehigh’s campus on October 24, 2025, to discuss innovations in the AI ecosystem.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro states, “With companies like Google, Westinghouse, and Amazon, and a growing innovation ecosystem, Pennsylvania is showing the country how to harness AI to grow our economy, empower workers, and improve people’s lives.” In support of these efforts to develop a strong workforce and contribute to economic growth, Lehigh can leverage not only its expertise in electrification and energy systems grounded in research centers and institutes such as ACES and the Institute for Cyber Physical Energy and Infrastructure (I-CPIE), but also its ground-breaking research into multiple energy sources conducted at the university’s Energy Research Center and the real-time hybrid testing, which combines computational and physical approaches, performed at Lehigh’s National Science Foundation funded Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI Lehigh) Experimental Facility.
You can read the roadmap here and learn more about I-CPIE here.