Speaker reel
Dr. Mark McNees studies the economics of who pays when growth creates new costs, with a focus on AI data center energy demand, utility rate structures, and the state laws now reshaping who funds the grid.
Topics
The data center boom is raising electricity bills across the country. This talk isn't about data centers. It's about what happens when a large new cost arrives at a shared system and nobody has decided who pays for it. Florida wrote the answer into law in 2026. Ten other states are working on their own version right now. This talk walks through how cost allocation actually gets decided, who is in the room when it happens, and why the load-creator-pays model is the market-aligned answer rather than a regulatory one. Audiences leave with a working framework for reading any infrastructure cost fight, in any sector.
Energy conferences · Utility industry · Policy convenings · C-suite leadershipEvery industry has costs it has pushed off its own books and onto somebody else. Ratepayers, patients, policyholders, taxpayers, the next town over. It works until someone notices, and then it gets assigned back, usually faster and more expensively than anyone planned for. Energy is where this is happening in public right now, and Dr. McNees is in the middle of that fight. But the same pattern runs through pharmaceutical pricing, insurance withdrawal from high-risk markets, hospital consolidation, and water rights. This talk shows leaders how to find the externalized costs in their own industry before a legislature, a regulator, or a plaintiff finds them first, and why the organizations that reprice honestly tend to outlast the ones that wait.
Business schools · Corporate and board leadership · Investor audiences · Industry associationsBooking
Available for keynotes, panels, and policy convenings. Inquire for availability and fees.
Booking inquiries: mmcnees@fsu.edu
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