Daniel Yergin

He said, now we talk about them as 300 megawatt data centers.

And the sense is that

You have electric cars and sort of energy transition demand.

Then you bringing back chip manufacturers and smart manufacturing United States, that's electricity demand.

Then you have AI and data centers.

And suddenly this industry that had been very flat is now looking at growth and how are you gonna meet the growth is very much on the agenda right now.

And data centers are looking where can we position ourselves so that we have access to the electricity that we need, reliable 24-hour electricity.

So now there's energy security in terms of oil and gas, but actually it's also energy security in terms of electricity.

So there's your potential constraint on economic activity.

Now, let me say, some will say the answer to that is innovation, that chips will become less electricity dependent or data centers will operate differently, that the demand will not grow as much.

So there is those who say that will happen, but it hasn't happened yet.

And those who are saying, you know, how are we going to meet that demand?

And, you know, AI is going to demand a lot more electricity than we had thought about a year or a year and a half ago.

Right, you look at developing data centers, well, they'll take all of the electricity generated by a nuclear power plant.

Well, if they do that, that means you've taken that baseload nuclear power off the grid.

So there's a kind of scramble to understand this.

And then there's the issues that we have

in our country, which is you can't get things permitted.

It takes so long.

You have supply chain problems and you have a workforce that is aged out.