Advocates for an increase in mandated distances between Pennsylvania communities and natural gas infrastructure said their call has become more urgent with an expected surge in fracking to fuel the state’s data center buildout. The request was first made in a petition to the state’s Environmental Quality Board in 2024. Meanwhile, natural gas production is expected to increase to help supply electricity to energy-hungry data centers, dozens of which are now planned for Pennsylvania. According to Data Center Proposal Tracker, an independent website, 47 data centers are proposed or in either pre-construction or construction phases in Pennsylvania. Shapiro, a Democrat, has courted the data center industry by offering to speed permitting on the condition that data centers bring their own power rather than taking it from the grid.