BlackRock's $33.4B AES buyout meets lawmaker pushback at FERC
What's the deal? A consortium led by BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP)Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and EQTDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → is buying The AES Corporation in a buyout valued at $33.4 billion including debt. The terms: $15 a share in cash and $10.7 billion of equity, with CalPERS and the Qatar Investment Authority among the backers.
Why now? On September 28, 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren and four House representatives asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reject the sale. Their objection is arithmetic: GIP generally seeks internal rates of return of 15 to 20 percent, roughly double the 10 percent median regulated utilities have historically earned.
What could go wrong? The lawmakers argue the gap lands on ratepayers in Indiana and Ohio. They also flag a conflict: GIP owned 40 data centers when it filed with FERC in May, and in July closed the $40 billion purchase of Aligned Data CentersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — more than 6.4 gigawatts across 51 campuses, at least 20 of them in the US and two in Ohio, where AES OhioDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → serves more than half a million customers.
The risk they name is cross-subsidization: utility investment that serves affiliated data centers while other customers carry part of the bill.
The counter-record: Two states have already ruled. Approving the transfer on September 17, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio ordered AES board members with data-center interests to recuse themselves from data-center matters. On October 7, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission approved AES IndianaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s plan for Google's 390-megawatt data center near Monrovia.
Under that plan, Google covers 100 percent of the costs to serve it — above the 80 percent minimum Indiana law requires — and pays at an 80 percent minimum demand level even if it uses less. AES estimates the savings to other customers at $770 million over 15 years if Google draws its full load, about $47 a year for the average household.
What AES says: No acquisition cost, premium, or transaction expense reaches Indiana or Ohio ratepayers, the company says, framing the buyers' capital as grid money.
The signal: The fight turns on whether private-equity return targets can sit inside a regulated utility without lifting bills. As data-center demand pulls infrastructure investors and utilities under common ownership, FERC's public-interest review will set a template for how far that consolidation can go.
Read more: theinference.org
Image credit: David Paul Ohmer
