In March, I spoke at DCD Connect in New York about a tension that is rapidly moving from background noise to a defining constraint: the collision between global demand for digital infrastructure and the very local realities of energy systems.
At one level, the story is simple. Demand is exploding. AI, electrification, and re-industrialisation are combining to drive a structural step-change in electricity consumption. Hyperscale data centers – once a rounding error in grid planning – are now material loads, often measured in gigawatts. In some US states, a single campus can rival the demand of a mid-sized city.
The new shape of demand
For most of the past two decades, electricity demand in developed economies was broadly flat. Efficiency gains offset economic growth. Energy‑intensive industries moved to cheaper locations. Grid planners operated in a world of incremental change. That world has gone.
AI workloads are fundamentally different from traditional cloud. They are power‑dense, continuous, and far less tolerant of interruption. Training clusters do not flex around grid constraints; they require firm, high‑quality power at scale.
