Power becomes a real‑estate constraint
Analysts say data‑center electricity demand is set to surge — Goldman Sachs forecasts roughly a 220% rise by 2030 — and that growth is driving big utility investment plans that could reshape local grid capacity and permitting priorities. Reporting ties this to a potential $1.4 trillion of utility capital spending and to operators increasingly using behind‑the‑meter generation and microgrids, which could make utility readiness a material differentiator for power‑hungry warehouses. ( )
Electricity is becoming a site-selection test for warehouses full of servers, as data-center operators chase power that local grids cannot deliver fast enough. (benzinga.com) Goldman Sachs now projects global data-center electricity use will rise 220% from 2023 to 2030, adding 905 terawatt-hours and reaching 1,350 terawatt-hours by the end of the decade. The bank’s estimate, as reported April 14, says about 60% of that new demand would come from the United States. (benzinga.com) U.S. utilities are responding with bigger buildout plans. PowerLines said 51 investor-owned utilities now expect to spend at least $1.4 trillion on capital projects over the next five years through 2030, up more than 21% from roughly $1.1 trillion a year earlier. (powerlines.org) Those plans still need state approval in many cases, and utilities are also replacing equipment damaged by storms and fires. But the new load from artificial-intelligence data centers is large enough that Wall Street Journal reporting said a single facility can use as much electricity as an entire city. (finance.yahoo.com) A data center is a warehouse of computers, and its value depends on steady power the way a factory depends on rail access. CBRE said average asking rates for 250-to-500-kilowatt requirements in North America rose 2.5% in the first half of 2025, while larger 10-megawatt deployments rose by as much as 19% because contiguous blocks of power were scarce. (cbre.com) That scarcity is changing where projects can go. CBRE said 74.3% of all under-construction capacity in primary North American markets was already preleased in the first half of 2025, with cloud and artificial-intelligence tenants locking up future space amid power and land constraints. (cbre.com) Operators are increasingly trying to make power on-site instead of waiting for a utility hookup. Data Center Knowledge reported April 15 that grid interconnection queues in several markets are stretched enough that expected time-to-power now runs about 1.5 to 2 years longer than developers previously expected. (datacenterknowledge.com) That is where “behind-the-meter” power comes in: generation built on the customer’s side of the utility meter, often inside a microgrid that can run on its own. Data Center Knowledge said some projects use those systems as bridge power until a permanent grid connection arrives, while others are planning a more lasting shift away from full dependence on the public grid. (datacenterknowledge.com) The politics are moving with the engineering. On March 4, the White House announced a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” under which leading hyperscalers and artificial-intelligence companies said they would build, bring, or buy the energy needed for their data centers and pay the full cost of related infrastructure. (whitehouse.gov) Critics say that promise will be hard to police through utility cases and local permitting fights. Politico reported March 4 that energy-market experts questioned whether requiring data centers to supply their own electricity would fully shield households from higher bills. (politico.com) The immediate result is that power access now sits beside land, tax breaks, and fiber routes on the real-estate checklist. In markets where substations, transmission lines, and permits lag, the winning site may simply be the one that can turn the lights on first. (constructiondive.com)
