FERC Faces New Pressure Over TeraWulf Plant Deal and Google's Reported Stake

A power plant sale becomes a test of data center transparency

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is facing growing pressure to reject TeraWulf's proposed purchase of a Maryland power plant after advocacy groups argued that the application failed to disclose Google's ownership stake in the data center company. The dispute highlights how quickly power, data infrastructure, and corporate governance are becoming intertwined as companies race to secure energy for large computing campuses.

Public Citizen, the NAACP, and the Port Tobacco River Conservancy filed a motion asking FERC to dismiss the application. Their argument is procedural but consequential: under FERC rules, they say GenOn, the seller of the Morgantown plant, was required to disclose affiliates that control more than 10% of TeraWulf. According to the motion, Google now exceeds that threshold.

The ownership question at the center of the filing

The groups point to TeraWulf's annual report, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 27, which says Google obtained warrants to buy about 73.6 million TeraWulf shares at 1 cent per share in exchange for providing backstop credit for data center leases. Based on the April 3 report, that arrangement gives Google a 14% ownership stake in TeraWulf.

That percentage matters because it turns a financial relationship into a regulatory issue. The challengers argue that Google's position is a material fact, not an incidental detail, because FERC's review depends in part on understanding who controls or materially influences the entities involved. Their filing says the omission should be enough to reject the application outright.

Why Maryland's Morgantown site matters

The asset at issue is the 216-megawatt oil-fired Morgantown Generating Station in Newburg, Maryland. The site also includes four coal-fired units totaling about 1,260 megawatts that were shut down in 2022. TeraWulf's plan for the property is ambitious: chairman and CEO Paul Prager said in a February 26 earnings call that the company intends to build the project in two phases, each including about 500 megawatts of gas-fired generation, 250 megawatts of battery storage, and 500 megawatts of data center load.

That framing makes clear why the transaction has drawn scrutiny from so many directions. This is not a simple transfer of an aging plant. It is part of a broader attempt to convert a legacy power site into a large energy-and-computing campus. In today's market, where AI workloads are intensifying the search for firm power and developable land, those sites have become strategically valuable.

Opposition is widening beyond the Google issue

The motion over disclosure comes on top of other objections already pending at FERC. The PJM Interconnection's market monitor, the Maryland Office of People's Counsel, the Sierra Club, and local citizens have also opposed the deal. The Office of People's Counsel, which represents Maryland ratepayers, said TeraWulf made no assurances that it would bring its own new generation to the site. The office also argued that key questions remain unclear.

That broader opposition matters because it shows the case is not only about whether Google's stake was reported correctly. It is also about what kind of burden a large data center project could place on the regional power system, who would bear the risks, and whether the transaction is being presented transparently enough for regulators and the public to judge it.

The bigger collision between AI growth and power regulation

Cases like this are becoming more important as data center developers look for faster ways to lock in energy access. Large computing projects increasingly seek direct ties to generation, storage, and transmission infrastructure because ordinary interconnection processes can be slow and uncertain. Retired or underused power plant sites therefore look attractive: they already sit inside the energy system and often come with industrial land, transmission connections, and room to expand.

But those advantages also make them politically sensitive. Communities, consumer groups, and regulators want to know whether new owners are adding generation, shifting grid costs, or building projects whose benefits are concentrated while their burdens are socialized. Once a major technology company enters the capital structure, those concerns deepen rather than fade.

What FERC's decision could signal

TeraWulf did not respond to a request for comment in the cited report. That leaves FERC's eventual handling of the filing as the next major indicator. If the commission takes the disclosure challenge seriously, the case could become an early signal that data-center-linked power deals will receive closer scrutiny over ownership structures and affiliate relationships. If it does not, critics will likely argue that regulators are moving too slowly for the scale of the infrastructure shift already underway.

Either way, the Maryland fight points to a broader reality: AI-era infrastructure is no longer just a technology story. It is a power-market story, a land-use story, and a transparency story. The more developers pursue vertically integrated energy strategies for data centers, the more likely it is that regulators will be asked to decide not only whether projects are legal, but whether they have been fully and candidly explained.

This article is based on reporting by Utility Dive. Read the original article.