Jamie Smith

speaker

65 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 1 Sep

Jamie Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

FT News Briefing · AI wakes up the sleepy US power sector · 29 Jun 2026 podcast

And really, we think this is due to this AI power demand that we're seeing.

It's really because AI data centers use a ton of electricity.

So analysts are forecasting that electricity demand in the United States is going to rise as much as 25% by 2030.

Now that's really an incredible number when you think in the previous two decades that electricity demand in the United States was basically flatlining.

So that's really changed the game for utilities and power companies here.

And they're having to invest huge amounts of capital to try and build the new generation and grid networks that are required to support this surge in construction of AI data centers.

So I think what's happening to really catalyze all these M&A deals is it's a combination of companies seeing new growth opportunities, but also an urgent need for them to raise money to build new infrastructure.

You know, typically the utility sector was considered a rather sleepy and actually quite a boring sort of part of the energy sector.

But this AI boom is really changing that and it's attracted a lot of companies looking to do deals.

I think what's going to happen is that these companies will remain monopolies and potentially become bigger monopolies if the deals are allowed to go through.

One thing about a monopoly is typically you see less competition and that could raise prices for consumers.

Now what the companies are saying when they're doing some of these deals is that they're arguing that by being bigger monopolies,

they can raise money at lower costs than rivals and that they can actually lower the electricity prices for the consumer.

Consumer advocates and some politicians, they do not agree with NextEra and the utilities arguments.

So they're likely to closely scrutinize these utility deals.

And in fact, senators, including Elizabeth Warren, have already begun an investigation into the rollout of all these AI data centers and the impact they're having on raising electricity costs.

So regulatory scrutiny will remain a high bar for some of these transactions.

I think it's going to really come down to the local regulators in the power markets where these things are happening.

So, you know, if NextEra's deal to take over Dominion sails through and it has to pass local regulators in each of the states that the companies operate, so that will be no mean feat.

then perhaps it will give a green light for these larger utility-style transactions.

Showing 41–60 of 65 · page 3 of 4