Photo via Exelon
Exelon is spending $41.7 billion in capital, up roughly 10% a year for the last four years, and none of it buys a single power plant. Calvin Butler, President and CEO of Exelon, told Forbes' The Enterprise Zone that unlike the integrated utilities that own generation and have captured the data-center earnings boom, Exelon is "pure T&D" — it owns the wires, not the plants.
"Nothing operates without the grid."
Calvin has run Exelon since the end of 2022, after three years as its president and chief operating officer and five years before that as CEO of BGE, one of Exelon's six local utilities. His case is that Exelon's business is the enabling infrastructure under the AI boom, not the beneficiary of it, and the bill for keeping up is his to defend.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 56 minutes of audio, 5 minutes of reading.
Here are the 4 takeaways that matter.
Forbes: The Enterprise Zone · Oct 29, 2026 · 56m · 51m saved
With Calvin Butler, President & CEO of Exelon
Key Takeaways
Exelon is investing $41.7 billion in capital, up about 10% a year over four years, with $10 billion going in this year alone
It owns no generation, so it hasn't captured the earnings boom some integrated utility peers have from data-center demand
ComEd's peak demand will nearly double by 2030, from 23 gigawatts in 2024 to over 30 gigawatts, driven largely by data centers
One large data center uses about one gigawatt — "the equivalent of one nuclear reactor"
Exelon withdrew a Pennsylvania rate increase after pushback from Governor Josh Shapiro, and Calvin says the error was process, not the need for the money
The grid is being asked to carry power in both directions, as rooftop solar and home batteries let households sell power back — a shift Calvin backs, with a security cost he says is real
1. The $41.7B Buildout
Calvin opened on the scale of Exelon's capital program: $41.7 billion, growing about 10% a year over the past four years, with $10 billion of that going in this year alone. He drew a distinction that matters for how investors should read Exelon's growth story.
Exelon owns no generation, so it hasn't captured the data-center earnings boom the way integrated utilities have
"We're pure T&D. We don't own the generation part of the bill. So we haven't experienced the level of growth that some of my utilities, pure utilities that own the generation, get to experience with the data center trade." — Calvin Butler
His framing is that Exelon is the infrastructure AI runs on, not the business collecting its upside. "Nothing operates without the grid," he said, and he pointed to Exelon's operational record as evidence it is holding up its end: its four utilities — ComEd, BGE, and the Pepco Holdings group of Delmarva and ACE — rank 1st, 2nd, 4th and 7th most reliable in the US, with a stated goal of getting all four into the top four.
