What Changed? | This Week's Briefing: The AI buildout is colliding with a constraint that markets haven't had to price for in years: available, deliverable electricity. | The shift isn't just about higher utility bills. It's about physical capacity—how quickly new generation can connect, whether transmission upgrades arrive on time, and how long permitting and interconnection studies stretch. As data centers expand and industrial demand firms, power availability is starting to influence where projects go and how fast they scale. | | White House Insider Reveals Trump's Handwritten Letter | It's no secret that 2026 will be a very special year for American patriots like you… | But what most people don't know is that… | This coming May, just a few weeks before America's 250th anniversary… | President Trump is planning to use executive powers granted by Public law 63-43… | To make a critical move that I predict will unleash a historical supercycle of wealth… | That will make a lot of patriots rich. | And if you click here and learn what to do, you could be one of them. | As a former advisor to the CIA, the Pentagon and the White House… | I've seen a hand-written letter from President Trump about what's coming. | Click here to see the letter for yourself… | And you'll understand exactly why this "gift" could be a game-changer for America in 2026. | | The Numbers | U.S. data centers consumed about 176 TWh in 2023, roughly 4.4% of total U.S. electricity use. Federal analysis suggests data center electricity demand could rise to roughly 325–580 TWh by 2028 (about 6.7%–12% of total U.S. electricity). National load forecasts now attribute a large share of near-term peak-load growth to data centers, measured in the tens of gigawatts. Interconnection queues remain historically large, with timelines often measured in years from application to operation for new generation projects. EIA's near-term outlook points to a demand growth rate that is stronger than the pre-pandemic norm, extending a multi-year upswing.
| | Why It Matters | Investors are used to treating energy as a price variable: fuel spikes lift inflation, margins compress, and demand cools. This cycle looks different because the binding constraint is often "can you get the megawatts, reliably, where you need them," not "what is today's power price." | That changes corporate behavior. Large-load developers increasingly optimize for grid access—substation capacity, interconnection timing, and upgrade certainty—alongside labor and tax incentives. Regions with faster, clearer build pathways can pull forward investment, while constrained regions may impose longer lead times, higher upfront costs, or curtailment-style terms that effectively become a new operating risk. | It also changes the utility outlook. A sustained load step-up supports a longer capex cycle—transmission upgrades, distribution rebuilds, and new generation procurement—while elevating the value of firm capacity and grid services. The market consequence is dispersion: "AI growth" becomes less uniform nationally and more dependent on regional infrastructure readiness. | The signal to watch isn't a single headline about power prices. It's the evolving map of where large loads can connect on schedule—and what that does to industrial siting, data center clustering, and local labor markets. | | Takeaway | Electricity is quietly re-rating from a commodity input into economic throughput. In an AI-and-reshoring economy, the ability to deliver electrons on time becomes a factor that can shape investment, timelines, and regional winners. | — Lauren
Editor, American Ledger | Resources | U.S. Department of Energy, December 2024
https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-releases-new-report-evaluating-increase-electricity-demand-data-centers | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, January 2025
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2025/01/15/berkeley-lab-report-evaluates-increase-in-electricity-demand-from-data-centers/ | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2025
https://emp.lbl.gov/queues | U.S. Energy Information Administration, January 2026
https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press582.php | Grid Strategies, November 2025
https://gridstrategiesllc.com/wp-content/uploads/Grid-Strategies-National-Load-Growth-Report-2025.pdf |
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