The Next Big Industrial Boom: Powering the Age of AI
By Eileen M. Fargis | Overlook Energy Advisors
If there’s one sector poised to define the next decade of investing, it’s energy and power infrastructure.
Everyone’s chasing AI, chips, and robotics — but none of it works without electricity. The real bottleneck isn’t innovation in silicon. It’s steel, copper, and electrons.
Across the U.S., data centers, EVs, crypto, and manufacturing reshoring are driving an unprecedented surge in electricity demand. The grid, long optimized for flat load growth, simply isn’t ready.
We’re entering a once-in-a-generation buildout of generation, transmission, and distributed power systems — a new industrial era. Gas peakers, battery storage, microgrids, and hybrid projects will all play critical roles.
“If you can navigate real estate, permitting, utilities, and capital markets, you’ll be in the middle of one of the biggest booms of our lifetime.”
The Real Bottleneck Isn’t Technology — It’s Interconnection
Most headlines obsess over the energy mix — gas vs. solar vs. nuclear — but the true constraint is interconnection.
Across the country, grid queues are clogged. Projects wait years for approvals, or are forced to downsize based on capacity limits. In this new environment, the most valuable commodity isn’t land or financing — it’s a path to the grid.
Global energy investment is projected to top $3.3 trillion in 2025.
Infrastructure funds hold over $400 billion in undeployed capital.
Data-center power commitments already exceed $75 billion.
Yet with financing timelines stretching and equipment lead times exploding, the winners will simply be those who can stay in the queue while others drop out.
“The interconnection queue isn’t a race. It’s a war of attrition.”
Why Gas Is the Bridge — and the Bottleneck
With nuclear taking 8–12 years to come online and AI load expected to double by 2030, natural gas is the only fuel that can scale fast enough in the short term.
Developers have announced nearly 19 GW of new capacity — but only 4 GW is actually being built. The reason isn’t capital or permitting; it’s pipes and pressure. Without new midstream infrastructure — pipelines, storage, and interconnects — even the best-sited plants are stranded.
In this cycle, midstream is the core of the solution. Power generation without fuel delivery is just expensive metal sitting in a field.
From Dirt to Power: The Evolution of Site Value
A decade ago, “data-center ready” meant flat land and zoning.
Today, it means energized infrastructure — now.
A live substation on or adjacent to the property.
Available capacity that can be tapped immediately.
Transformers, switchgear, and distribution in place.
A utility commitment isn’t power. Paperwork isn’t electrons.
True powered land flips the switch today.
Meanwhile, rising power density and cooling challenges are creating “stranded power” — megawatts paid for but unusable because cooling systems can’t remove the heat. Retrofitting for liquid cooling is slow and costly, making new builds designed for high-density AI loads far more valuable than legacy facilities.
The Supply Chain Squeeze
Behind the scenes, a supply-chain crisis is unfolding:
Transformers: 24–36 months lead time
Switchgear: 18–24 months
High-voltage breakers: 30+ months
Even turbine manufacturing is tapped out. Global OEMs are booked solid through 2028–2030. More than $400 billion worth of planned gas-fired projects risk delay or cancellation — not because of financing or permitting, but because the physical equipment doesn’t exist.
When the clock runs out on financing or PPAs, those assets will hit the market at a discount.
The next two years could present the best distressed opportunities in decades.
The Redrawn Map of Power
The data-center map is being completely redrawn.
Once, proximity to fiber or population centers determined site selection. Not anymore. Fiber can be built. Power can’t.
Today’s best sites are defined by:
Utilities with excess capacity or flexible generation pathways
Regions with available natural-gas pipeline infrastructure
Regulatory environments that move fast
This shift is creating new energy geographies — overlooked regions where abundant power and permissive regulation converge. The next “Northern Virginia” may be hiding in plain sight.
Front-of-the-Meter vs. Behind-the-Meter
Front-of-the-Meter (FTM):
Grid-based power from utilities or IPPs — scalable, diversified, lower CAPEX for end users.
Behind-the-Meter (BTM):
On-site power — gas turbines, fuel cells, batteries — faster to deploy but limited in scale.
Hyperscalers prefer FTM for reliability and scale, but when grid timelines stretch to seven years, BTM becomes the bridge. The smartest developers are now integrating both models — grid + local generation — to deliver power when it’s needed, not when it’s promised.
AI: The Problem and the Solution
AI is driving the energy crisis — and will be the reason we solve it.
Goldman Sachs projects data-center load rising 160% by 2030, the fastest acceleration in modern history. Yet AI is already optimizing the very systems it strains:
Cutting cooling energy by 20% at Meta data centers
Predicting renewable output in real time
Detecting faults in turbines and solar panels before failure
Improving thermal efficiency at gas plants
The same algorithms that devour power are teaching the grid to breathe.
The Missing Link: Integration
There’s no shortage of specialists in this ecosystem — developers, financiers, engineers, midstream operators, utilities. What’s missing are integrators — people who can align all the moving parts.
Most stalled projects fail not because of poor economics, but because the teams are siloed.
Power developers want customer certainty; customers want power certainty. Both wait. Nothing moves.
“The most successful firms are the ones who can align land, power, engineering, capital, and end users into a single, moving system.”
Infrastructure Isn’t Software
When you stand in front of a live substation — 50-ton transformers, insulators engineered for lightning strikes, circuit breakers worth more than houses — the scale becomes real.
Infrastructure isn’t code you can push overnight.
It’s hardware. And hardware takes time, both to procure and to build.
“The next decade won’t be defined by who builds the biggest data center, but by who can actually deliver the power to run it.”
The Great Power Boom
We’re on the brink of a $7 trillion data-center and energy build-out. But only the projects that secure the full stack — fuel, generation, interconnection, equipment, and cooling — will survive. Everything else will get stuck in queues, budgets, or backlogs.
This isn’t just a story about rising demand.
It’s a story about capability — about who can integrate the physical, technical, regulatory, and financial pieces into one executable plan.
Because in the end, the future runs on power.
About Overlook Energy Advisors
Overlook Energy Advisors helps investors, developers, and operators navigate the complex intersection of energy transition, digital infrastructure, and capital formation. We bridge the worlds of power, data, and finance — aligning strategy with execution to create enduring value in the age of electrified intelligence.
📍 Learn more at www.overlookenergyadvisors.com
