Oklahoma needs to ensure affordable and reliable electricity to attract data centres and other energy-hungry businesses, while keeping costs low for residents.
The state should prioritise energy sources like natural gas, which provides roughly half of Oklahoma’s electricity, and reject reliance on unreliable, intermittent and costly sources like wind and solar, Cameron Sholty writes.
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Oklahoma’s Digital Future Will Be Built on Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security
By Cameron Sholty, as published by Real Clear Energy, with an introduction from Climate Realism
Introduction
If Oklahoma wants data centres and other energy-hungry businesses, the state will have to find a way to ensure electricity that is readily and consistently available and relatively affordable for AI uses, while also keeping costs low for residents.
Climate Realism has previously discussed (HERE, HERE and HERE, for instance) why wind and solar cannot provide reliable and affordable electricity, but fossil fuels like natural gas and coal, along with other resources like nuclear, can.
Oklahoma’s Digital Future Will Be Built on Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security
By Cameron Sholty, 23 March 2026
An increasingly familiar story is cropping up across rural America: communities wrestling with when, where and how to welcome data centres. This month, The New York Times highlighted how Oklahoma, in particular, is no longer speculating about that challenge – but living it.
The state is already confronting one of its defining economic and regulatory questions: how to welcome the next wave of digital investment without forcing families, retirees, and small businesses to pay for it through higher electric bills. That is not a side debate. It’s central to Oklahoma’s future.
Data centres don’t just raise questions about land use or local politics; they raise a deeper question about whether Oklahoma has an energy policy strong enough to absorb massive new demand without sacrificing affordability and reliability for everyone else.
The stakes are enormous. Artificial intelligence, cloud computing and hyperscale data centres are redrawing the map of economic growth in America. States that can provide dependable electricity at a reasonable price will attract jobs, capital and long-term investment. States that cannot will watch opportunity move elsewhere.
But Oklahoma should not confuse growth with surrender.
There is a right way to prepare for this future and there is a reckless way. The reckless way is to throw open the doors, celebrate the ribbon-cuttings and quietly send the bill to everyone else. It is to let residential customers and small businesses become unwilling financiers of infrastructure built to serve some of the wealthiest corporations on earth. It is to call that “economic development” and hope no one notices the difference.
Oklahoma should reject that model outright.
In 2025, the Legislature took an important step. Under the leadership of Senate and House energy committee chairmen Grant Green and Brad Boles, lawmakers sent Governor Kevin Stitt S.B. 460, a straightforward bill that reaffirmed Oklahoma’s policy preference for natural gas in new fossil-fuel electric generation. That matters because natural gas currently provides roughly half of Oklahoma’s electricity and remains one of the state’s most dependable large-scale power sources.
In 2026, Senator Michael Bergstrom has proposed what should be viewed as an essential next step: a framework built around affordable, reliable, and clean energy – or “ARC.” S.B. 1300 would direct the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to prioritise affordable, reliable, clean energy security; define reliability around non-intermittent generation and meaningful performance standards; favour domestic fuel sources; prioritise infrastructure and components built in Oklahoma and the US; and prohibit critical resources sourced or manufactured by a foreign adversary nation. It also calls for sufficient dispatchable clean energy to meet residential and commercial demand.
That is not abstraction. It is not ideology. It is the continuation of serious state policy.
ARC protects ratepayers by insisting that new demand be backed by affordable, reliable power, instead of leaving Oklahoma families and small businesses to absorb the cost of intermittency, unreliability and grid instability.
President Trump has helped push the national conversation in a healthier direction by pressing major technology firms to secure new or expanded power sources for their data centres and by making clear that the costs of AI-driven energy demand should not simply be dumped onto ordinary consumers. That principle is sound. If trillion-dollar technology companies want to build massive, power-hungry facilities, they should bear the real costs associated with that growth. Oklahoma ratepayers should not be used as a financial backstop for someone else’s expansion plans.
That is why S.B. 1300 matters. It starts from the right premise: energy policy should serve Sooners first. Growth matters. Investment matters. But neither should come at the expense of affordability, reliability or energy security for the people already here.
Too much of this debate goes off the rails because it swings between alarmism and fantasy. On one side is the claim that any push for dependable, dispatchable energy is somehow a retreat from progress. On the other is the notion that Oklahoma can power the digital economy on slogans, wishful thinking and a refusal to confront basic grid realities. Neither approach is serious. Neither pays the bills. Neither keeps the lights on.
What Oklahoma needs is not panic. It is discipline.
That means insisting that new large-load growth be matched by real generation, real infrastructure and real cost responsibility. It means recognising that reliability is not a talking point; it is the difference between a grid that performs and one that buckles under pressure. It means understanding that affordability is not whatever looks cheapest in a narrow snapshot, but what remains sustainable when demand surges, weather shifts, and backup power is needed. It means securing supply chains so Oklahoma’s future is not tied to fragile overseas dependencies or hostile foreign powers.
In other words, it means governing in the real world.
And that is good for Oklahoma’s economy. A state with reliable and reasonably priced electricity is attractive not just to data centres, but also to manufacturers, processors, logistics firms and every other major employer that depends on stable energy. A state that protects ratepayers from hidden cross-subsidies tells investors that growth is welcome, but not on foolish terms. A state that values domestic fuel, American-built infrastructure and resilient supply chains is a state that understands how prosperity is actually built.
None of this should be controversial. Oklahoma does not have to choose between economic development and responsible energy policy. It can have both. But only if lawmakers act with urgency, clarity and the confidence to reject false choices.
The data-centre era is here. The power demands are real. The risks of cost-shifting are real. And the opportunity is real, too.
Oklahoma should meet this moment with confidence, not confusion. It should make clear that growth must pay its own way, that households and small businesses come first, and that the state’s energy future will be built on affordable, reliable, clean energy security.
That is not merely good energy policy. It is good governance.
About the Author
Cameron Sholty is the Executive Director of Heartland Impact, the advocacy arm of The Heartland Institute, a 40-year-old public policy think tank based in Schaumburg, Illinois, USA.
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