Micron tells House committee U.S. fabs will need large, reliable power — company requests tax credits, permitting fixes

Manish Bhatia, executive vice president of global operations at Micron Technology, told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that domestic semiconductor manufacturing requires reliable, affordable power and that short interruptions can create very high costs for fabs.

"Each of these full scale fabs built here will run 24 by 7 by 365 days a year and consume, at full build out, about 400 megawatts of power," Bhatia said, describing the continuous load profile that differentiates fabs from many other industrial users. Micron said its planned U.S. investments exceed $100 billion over the next 20 years and that the company expects U.S. energy demand for its operations could reach roughly 2 gigawatts by 2040.

Bhatia recommended three congressional priorities to protect U.S. competitiveness: - Preserve and extend semiconductor investment tax credits that are set to expire. Micron said construction and operating cost deltas with Asian competitors range from 35% to 45%, and that predictable federal incentives help bridge that gap. - Speed permitting and reduce duplicative federal/state filings for generation and transmission projects so new capacity can come online on the industry’s timeframe. - Invest in energy equipment and supply chains, including nuclear fuel supply and long‑lead items, so new generation technologies can be deployed at scale.

Why it matters: Bhatia emphasized that fab production is sensitive to brief power disturbances: "Even fractions of a second of power loss, or even just power sag or droop, forces us to reset equipment... and, ultimately can cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars." Micron’s testimony framed energy reliability and regulatory certainty as essential to the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing renaissance and to the Biden‑era CHIPS investments enacted by Congress.

Clarifying details recorded at the hearing include Micron’s job and investment projections — Bhatia said the company’s announced expansions are expected to create roughly 11,000 direct Micron jobs and 9,000 construction jobs, with a combined direct-and-indirect job impact Micron estimated at roughly 80,000 jobs nationally.

Micron urged an "all‑of‑the‑above" approach to generation but emphasized the importance of stable, low‑cost baseload or dispatchable sources for fabs. The company flagged transmission upgrades and reduced permitting timelines as practical near‑term fixes that would materially affect siting and operating decisions.

No formal actions or votes were taken at the hearing. Members pressed Micron on permitting experiences and interconnection queue delays; Micron described repeated state and federal filings that lengthen project timelines.