Private Equity Is Circling Utilities as AI Reshapes the Grid

While it seems that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on much of anything these days, there’s at least one common enemy that’s bringing both sides of the aisle together: data centers. Representatives on both sides of the aisle are increasingly pushing back against hyperscalers who are developing massive data center campuses on local energy grids, driving up energy demand and therefore causing electricity prices to skyrocket for everyone, whether they benefit from the artificial intelligence boom or not.

The Trump administration has attempted to resolve the issue by pushing the tech sector to provide its own energy sources to power its rapidly proliferating data centers. But while the legislation ostensibly pushes the responsibility of energy buildout – and the money to support it – back onto the tech firms responsible for skyrocketing energy demand rates in the first place, there is some concern that the policy may yield some considerable and costly unintended consequences. Trump “essentially envisions a bespoke new power system built in parallel to the existing one,” argues a recent op-ed from the energy editor of non-partisan news outlet Semafor.

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