What will it take to power the AI boom?

RS: 

I’ll probably talk a little bit more around the US because that’s really where we’re seeing the demand growth at this stage. I mean, there was a McKinsey report that came out last year and just to kind of put this in context, I mean they’re talking around 600 terawatt hours of power by 2030 being needed for this data centre demand that is around 12% of total US electricity demand. So, you know, absolutely huge in a really short amount of time.

So what that means is that it’s really gonna require all forms of generation to meet this new higher level of power demand. So, you know, we see the continuation of renewables being built out given that they’re one of the cheapest forms of energy in the US and the shortest time to market new gas fired power generation plants will then start to come online, you know, depending on turbine availability.

Then we’re gonna start talking about new nuclear plants getting built in the US. So that could come in the form of small modular reactors, but we also think that there, we’ll start to see some large scale plants coming on as well.

Now you did mention around the grid and from a grid perspective, I would completely agree with your comment. The grid isn’t really able to cope with this new higher level of demand and it will require more investment into it. When we think about that, you know, total grid related capital expenditure between 2025 and 2029 is expected to be more than the previous decade. So that just gives you a sense of how much investment is going to be required in the network to allow all of this power generation to come onto the system.