- Pacifico Energy
- Oct 16
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Pacifico Energy today announced that its Founder and Chairman, Nate Franklin, participated in a headline keynote and panel at Yotta 2025, the premier U.S. event focused on data centers, AI infrastructure, and sustainable energy.
The session, titled “From Policy to Power: Building America’s AI Infrastructure,” featured Franklin alongside Mark P. Mills, Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics. Together, they explored how America’s AI Action Plan will shape the nation’s digital infrastructure, expand energy capacity, and secure long-term competitiveness in the AI era.
AI and Energy at a Crossroads
Artificial intelligence is reshaping nearly every sector of the economy, driving exponential growth in data-center power demand. AI-driven computing workloads are projected to require tens of gigawatts of new capacity over the next decade — a scale the utility industry has never faced.
The discussion centered on four key challenges:
Data center expansion: AI workloads are multiplying demand for new digital campuses, many requiring gigawatt-scale energy capacity.
Energy resilience: Ensuring around-the-clock reliability requires a balanced mix of renewables, storage, and hybrid systems tailored for continuous operation.
National security: As AI applications extend into defense, intelligence, and communications, energy stability becomes a matter of national interest.
Investment scale: Meeting the needs of an AI-driven economy will demand historic levels of capital, coordination, and speed across both public and private sectors.
“We’re going all-in on behind-the-meter power for data centers,” said Nate Franklin during the session. “Demand for AI infrastructure will outpace the grid’s ability to deliver. Speed, reliability, and control can’t wait on interconnect queues — they require direct, purpose-built generation.”
Pacifico Energy’s Role: Building for Scale and Certainty
Pacifico Energy is actively developing utility-scale solar, battery storage, hybrid systems, and off-grid generation across California, Texas, and other key U.S. markets. These projects are engineered to deliver both clean energy and dependable capacity for hyperscale data centers, industrial clusters, and mission-critical facilities.
“The future of AI infrastructure depends on energy independence at the site level,” Franklin emphasized. “Co-locating generation with compute isn’t just efficient — it’s strategic. Reliability and velocity are now the new currencies of competitiveness.”
GW Ranch: Powering the Next Generation of AI
One of Pacifico Energy’s flagship projects, GW Ranch, is a planned 5-gigawatt off-grid generation campus in Pecos County, Texas. Spanning more than 8,000 acres, the site integrates gas turbines and battery storage to support hyperscale data centers and AI operations.
By bypassing grid interconnection delays and regulatory bottlenecks, GW Ranch is on track to deliver 1 GW of capacity by 2028 and 5 GW by 2030, offering unparalleled speed, reliability, and certainty for America’s digital economy.
“Projects like GW Ranch are designed for the scale this new era demands,” said Franklin. “They combine the reliability of proven generation with the flexibility of modern storage — giving data-center operators the confidence to build faster and operate smarter.”
Yotta 2025: A Gathering of Industry Leaders
Yotta 2025 convened more than 3,000 industry executives, 200+ speakers, and 150+ sponsors in Las Vegas to address the converging challenges of compute, cooling, power, and policy.The session featuring Nate Franklin underscored the importance of aligning public-sector policy with private-sector innovation to deliver the scale of energy infrastructure now required for AI growth.
You can watch the full Yotta 2025 session, “From Policy to Power,” featuring Nate Franklin, Watch Video Here
About Pacifico Energy
Pacifico Energy develops large-scale energy infrastructure across the United States, including solar, battery storage, hybrid, and off-grid generation systems. With more than $5 billion in completed projects and a growing portfolio of gigawatt-scale developments like GW Ranch, Pacifico is focused on delivering the reliable, flexible, and scalable power essential to AI, data-center, and industrial growth in the modern economy.
Media Contact: media@pacificoenergy.com
