Private Equity Is Circling Utilities as AI Reshapes the Grid
Iraq Wants to Double Oil Output—and Needs OPEC to Get Out of the Way Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… While it seems that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on much of anything these days, there’s at least one common enemy that’s bringing both sides of the aisle together: data centers.
Representatives on both sides of the aisle are increasingly pushing back against hyperscalers who are developing massive data center campuses on local energy grids, driving up energy demand and therefore causing electricity prices to skyrocket for everyone, whether they benefit from the artificial intelligence boom or not.
The Trump administration has attempted to resolve the issue by pushing the tech sector to provide its own energy sources to power its rapidly proliferating data centers.
But while the legislation ostensibly pushes the responsibility of energy buildout – and the money to support it – back onto the tech firms responsible for skyrocketing energy demand rates in the first place, there is some concern that the policy may yield some considerable and costly unintended consequences.
Trump “essentially envisions a bespoke new power system built in parallel to the existing one,” argues arecent op-edfrom the energy editor of non-partisan news outlet Semafor.
By inviting Big Tech to build its own energy infrastructure, policymakers are inviting the private sector to create a shadow grid that operates outside of the regulations that govern our standard electricity grids, and the oversight mechanisms that ensure compliance with other policy measures, such as environmental protections.
Plus, by encouraging Big Tech to invest in its own energy infrastructure, the country is missing out on a major opportunity to encourage much-needed investment in its own aging grid at a time when more resilience and greater transmission infrastructure is sorely needed.
“Most of today’s cost pressure is coming from transmission, distribution, and system readiness, not energy supply,” Brandon Owens, a grid expert and founder of advisory platform AIxEnergy, was quoted by Politico last week.
“Those costs remain even if a data center self-supplies generation.” Despite these concerns, Big Tech is pushing ahead with some truly gargantuan energy infrastructure projects, most of which are being developed in tandem with sprawling data center campuses.
Amazon is currently building a gas-fired power plant in Texas that is set to become thesingle-biggest source of power-related emissions in the entire United States.
And just this week, Nvidia announced that it would team up with Japan’s SoftBank and the United States government to build thecountry’s largest fossil-fuel plantto power an OpenAI project in Ohio.
And firms like Nvidia aren’t the only investors racing to build up power production capacity in anticipation of skyrocketing energy demand rates dri.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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