Governments build. Artificial intelligence is consuming. Are you ready?
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Hello reader.
Global attitudes towards energy supplies have shifted sharply from “just in time” to “just in case”. Gone are the days when countries happily assumed that giant tankers filled with crude oil would arrive at their ports tomorrow, just as they did yesterday.
The world of energy has changed, and there is no going back to what it was.
Two massive, simultaneous forces are colliding to create what could become one of the most enduring energy bull markets in modern history.
Together, they are lighting a fire under every corner of the energy complex – oil and gas, solar and wind, battery storage, nuclear, pipeline and grid infrastructure alike.
per day Smart moneyLet’s examine these two forces and the market opportunities they uniquely create in the energy sector
Next, I will show you how to profit effectively.
The first force: the great nationalization of energy
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 fired the first warning flare on energy markets. He reminded Europe – and much of the rest of the world – that energy dependence represents a strategic weakness.
Suddenly, countries that had spent decades improving cheap energy were rushing to get cheap energy any energy.
Although it was a harsh awakening, it failed to open the eyes of most energy importing countries. They simply hit the “snooze” button and continued as before.
Then came Iran.
The US-Israeli attack on Iran set off a second warning flare – one that proved impossible to ignore.
Because the conflict suddenly choked off a critical artery of global oil supplies, the global economy began gasping for breath almost immediately. Countries that rely heavily on fossil fuel imports saw their energy costs rise overnight.
The message was clear: rely on someone else’s power supply at your own risk.
Before the Iranian conflict, macro data indicated that global energy markets were balanced. But this “balance” never resembled a symmetrical scale of justice; It was like a circus elephant on a chair.
It was risky, and it’s getting riskier, which is why each of the recent energy shocks has strengthened the case for countries building their own energy supplies from the ground up.
So, an urgent, planet-wide capital spending program is being implemented. If past is prologue, even the most aggressive predictions will fall short of reality.
But this is only the first force causing investors to rush in and adjust their energy investments…
The second force: Artificial intelligence does not sleep for anyone
And now for the second force, the one that arrived without warning, turned every energy forecast on the planet upside down, and shows no sign of slowing down.
Artificial intelligence needs power. Lots of it.
As of 2022, data centers have consumed nearly 300 terawatt-hours of electricity globally – a number that has barely budged for about a decade, as efficiency improvements in computing hardware have kept pace with the growth in workloads. The International Energy Agency has looked at this consistent trend and predicted another decade of the same.
Then ChatGPT was released in November 2022… and everything changed.
By 2024, electricity consumption in global data centers will reach 415 terawatt hours. By 2025, the number had jumped to 500 – a 20% increase in one year. The International Energy Agency now expects it to reach 945 terawatt hours by 2030.
More aggressive forecasters see more. Goldman Sachs has raised its 2030 forecast three times in the past 14 months, most recently to 1,350 terawatt hours — or more. Triple Consensus 2022.
Looking ahead, BloombergNEF predicts that data centers will consume 1,600 terawatt-hours globally by 2035. To put that in perspective: If data centers were a country and consumed that volume of electricity today, they would be the fourth-largest consumer in the world – behind only China, the United States, and India.
In the United States specifically, data centers are on track to represent approx half Of all the incremental electricity demand growth through 2030. Building statistics tell the same story. Global data center installations rose 22% in 2025 – the second consecutive record year – with 24.8 GW of new capacity currently under construction.
US electric utilities appear to have gotten the message.
Mizuho Securities tracked capital spending plans and found that U.S. utilities would increase their 2026 spending by 70% compared to the 2025 total, which was itself a record high — and more than five times the size of the increases Mizuho tracked in the early 2020s.
The three largest volumes tell the story:
- Duke Energy Company (everyone) It raised its five-year capital plan by $11.5 billion, bringing the generation, transmission and distribution budget for the period 2026-2030 to $90 billion.
- the Southern Company (So) It raised its five-year plan by about 50%, from $37 billion to $56 billion.
- American Electric Power Company (AEP) It also increased its planned spending by 50% to $74 billion.
This is what “energy, everywhere, at once” looks like in practice.
As the demand for electricity increases, so does the opportunity to expand your investment portfolio…
Opportunity lives in the gap
This is not a story of one technology winning. It’s a story about everyone Energy technologies win – at different times, in different places, and for different customers – because the world simultaneously needs more of all types of energy.
So, in a stock market that trades at historically high valuations – where investors are paying a high price for growth that may or may not materialize – the energy sector presents a more compelling opportunity: attractive valuations, coupled with multiple, complex structural growth drivers.
in Fry investment reportWe are taking advantage of this opportunity. Wide range of our portfolio Energy stocks It shows that we are prepared for the serious impact that energy nationalization, the rise of data centers, and a surge in electricity demand will have on the energy sector.
I discussed one way in which we are prepared Case last Saturdaywhere I examine how solar energy is expanding in today’s age of artificial intelligence and how investors can ride the wave of profits with our pick currently sitting at nearly 80%.
Experts have chronically and persistently downplayed energy investment trends.
They still underestimate him to this day.
This gap between what forecasters expect and what the world actually needs is where the investment opportunity exists.
And stay tuned for tomorrow Smart moneywhere I will detail one of my favorite opportunities in a specific section of the sector.
It is considered,
Eric Fry
