Emily Flippen

The IEA projects that global energy consumption for data centers alone will double by 2030.

And in the United States, the Pew Research Center projects that AI-based electricity usage will rise 133% in that same time period.

So I understand that a lot of investors hear that, and they think the obvious takeaway is that there's going to be a need for infrastructure investment, right?

That's a great opportunity for energy investments over the next couple of years because you need energy to power those initiatives.

What do you personally make of that?

It reminds me of this quote.

I never watched House of Cards, but I know this quote from the Netflix TV show, which is, what is it?

Powers, the new real estate, something along that line.

And I think the commentaries around physical power, like, you know,

the influence you have over other people, not actual energy power.

But in this context, for the people who are investing and trying to make AI a reality, it is kind of the real estate that you need.

And it is, I think, the bottleneck that investors are missing, which is the energy consumption that is necessary.

And it's very much the real bottleneck that these hyperscalers are facing.

You

physical real estate in the world in Northern Virginia, wherever it may be.

And you can have access to all the capital in the world.

But if you don't have access to energy, or if there are local regulations or local pushback that is preventing you from being able to access the energy that you need to run your data centers, then you lack the power, you lack the influence to actually make your dreams, whatever they may be, your data centers a reality.

So it

It makes a lot of sense to me that we see companies like NextEra, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, all of these companies trying to gain access to the limited supplies of energy and power that they need to now.

Because what they're talking about in terms of the build-out of data centers, they need that.