I was in New York last week for the event still known as Climate Week, which could today be more accurately described as “energy + finance + AI + data centers + trade + security week.” This expanded rhetorical scope that brings with it both more events (more than 1,000, in fact!) and more talk. Anyone reading this weekly note from Halcyon has probably been deluged with testimonials, LinkedIn posts, thoughtful reflections, and earnest appeals. I’ll spare you those. 

What I will provide is a glimpse of one of many gatherings: the keynote presentation I delivered at Bank of America’s flagship event “The Next Phase of Energy, Power, and AI”.   

I structured the keynote in three parts. The first was discontinuity: a break in previous modes and previous paths on US electricity demand, which had been flat for more than a decade and is now growing at the fastest pace seen in decades. Here’s a glimpse. 

Another discontinuity: an AI capital expenditure boom that places data center buildout as bigger than the boom in telecommunications investment in 2000 (though not quite as big as investment at the peak of U.S. onshore oil and gas exploration and production).

Next is disparity: we have wildly different understandings of future system growth, and very different expectations of the electrical system that could be built as a result. The data here are drawn from the Halcyon catalog via Halcyon Search; some are fairly expected, but others are real deep cuts into the regulatory information flow. One example: Texas transmission service providers and the Texas grid operator have (shall we say) somewhat different ideas about how many data centers will be built.

And in Northern California, Pacific Gas & Electric (which has approved less than 200 megawatts of transmission-level interconnected loads in a decade) says that it has more than 6,000 megawatts of data center load requests. 

And finally — there is data. Not projections or hand-waving, but rigorously sourced, widely useful information pulled from authoritative regulatory sources. Halcyon has two data subscriptions right now, and we’re building three more; I brought highlights of our Gas Power Plant Tracker to New York. First: for all the discussion of gas generation capacity soaring to meet new demand, only about 50 gigawatts has a firm timeline right now. 

There’s much more where this came from: plant costs, locations, acquisition trends…and that’s just on gas. I also touched on just how text-heavy today’s data center regulatory proceedings have become, and just how elaborate (and large) the newest large load tariffs have become as well. Think of these ideas (from the keynote speaker’s stage perspective) as the phones-out slides, when the audience starts snapping pictures.  

We’re happy to share the entire keynote presentation, too, in case you’d like to take some pictures for yourself: here is the link.  

As always, thanks for reading.

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