Alistair Marsh

Well, essentially the Schneider Electric data shows that the massive amount of power demand, so power demand in the US has basically been flat for about two decades, and all of a sudden with the advent of AI, or the vast AI acceleration that we're seeing in the US, with the billions of dollars of Capex being put to work and the mass build out of data centers, you suddenly have this surge in demand.

Add to that increased electrification, add to that onshoring of manufacturing,

And you suddenly have this sort of crisis moment where the energy infrastructure in the US has not been invested in and not been built out particularly aggressively for a period, meets a very aggressive build out of AI.

And so we're going to reach, according to the Schneider data, we're going to reach a crunch point in about

three years in 2028, that's the moment they say that the supply available on the system will no longer be able to meet demand unless we start eating into emergency reserves of power, which are saved for moments of extreme weather or cyber attacks and so forth, all of which means that the grid is basically going to become under increased strain and going to be increasingly vulnerable.

Short answer is no.

I mean, you're kind to let me not weigh into U.S.

politics, but there is both a political issue here.

I mean, you see it with recently power prices are on the ballot in New Jersey and they'll be increasingly on the ballot and that could turn against the AI build out.

if there's a political groundswell against that.

But also there's a geopolitical element here where the US is in a race with China to become the AI superpower.

And China has, while you could argue that the US has the advantage in terms of tech and chips, actually China has a structural advantage with cheaper abundant power.

And that might be, according to some analysts, something that wins out in the long run.

And so what Schneider is saying here, to go back to actually answer your question, is that

No, you can't fix this in the three-year period because you can't build enough generation and enough transmission in that period because most of those projects would take 10 years to build.

Therefore, you need to find ways at the margin, what are sometimes called grid-enhancing technologies, battery storage, microgrids, other things that can build out extra capacity that don't require those large, long infrastructure build-outs that just won't be ready in time.