Energy Gang

Electricity markets are under renewed pressure. Surging demand forecasts from data centres and other large loads are colliding with anxiety over reliability, rising consumer bills, and the pace of new investment. In markets such as PJM and ERCOT, those tensions are turning an arcane debate about market design into a live political question: can competitive power markets still deliver affordable, reliable electricity in a period of ...

AI is turning compute into a strategic resource, and the scramble to secure GPU capacity is starting to look a lot more like a commodity market than a traditional cloud-services business. As data-centre developers, lenders and energy companies try to price the next wave of AI demand, a new question is coming into focus: Can the industry build the kind of benchmark and hedging tools that already exist for oil, gas and power? 

Ho...

In the AI revolution, one of the critical constraints is how much additional electricity can be made available to power new data centers. And it is often argued that one of the key constraints on the growth of electricity supply is capacity in the equipment supply industry. The rate at which electricity supply can grow is determined in part by how fast the equipment industry can supply new turbines, transformers, switchgear and cir...

As the renewable energy and storage industries grow, and enter more hostile geographies, asset resilience is becoming an increasingly pressing concern. Developers, owners and lenders want to know how solar, storage and other facilities can increase their resilience to the growing risks of physical threats such as hailstorms and wildfires. The rush to add capacity to meet surging demand from new data centres is adding to the pressur...

Gas is back at the center of the energy debate. Surging demand for electricity to power new data centres, and growing fears about global energy security resulting from the conflict in the Middle East, are raising some urgent questions for the US gas industry. Consumers want to know whether the US can produce enough gas for the world without losing the price advantage that has benefited American consumers for many years? Can a new e...

US electricity prices are rising at well above the general rate of inflation. The data center investment boom, by adding to electricity demand, points to further upward pressure in the future. Consumers are feeling the strain, and they want politicians and regulators to do something about it. One proposed solution is that the rules around competitive power markets need radical reform. In this episode, the Energy Gang looks at PJM, ...

The old joke about nuclear fusion power is that commercial deployment is 30 years in the future: it always has been and it always will be. It may be time to retire that joke. Private fusion companies have now raised billions in capital, and pilot plants are moving from slide decks and plans into steel and concrete. The questions now are not so much around whether fusion power can ever work, and more about how soon it can reach the ...

Los Angeles will host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, an event that poses formidable logistical challenges. To put it in terms that will be familiar to many Americans, it is the equivalent of seven Super Bowls happening every day, in one of the world’s biggest urban economies. That means huge demands on the city’s transport and energy systems. But it also creates a rare opportunity to use the games as a catalyst ...

Whoever you ask, you are likely find broad agreement that the world needs more energy infrastructure. Whether you are worried about ensuring secure supplies, powering new data centres, or cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the answer is most often going to be investing in new assets: power plants, transmission lines, factories, pipelines, ports… the list goes on. But all too often, getting big projects built is painfully slow...

US residential electricity prices have risen by more than 40 per cent since the start of 2021, which is much faster than general inflation. Utilities requested a total of $31 billion in increased rates last year, double the amount in 2024. And investor-owned utilities are planning to spend $1.4 trillion on capital projects over the next five years – enough on one calculation, to build almost 2,000 Hoover Dams at today’s...

Methane is the second-most important greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide. It has accounted for roughly 30% of human-induced global warming since the 19th century. But it is also a valued commodity, used to heat homes and cook food, provide raw materials for industry and keep the lights on. Every molecule leaked is energy wasted and money lost. The IEA estimates that about 200 billion cubic meters per year could be saved for produc...

There are two great forces reshaping the world of energy today. The AI boom and the wave of investment in new data centres have sent power producers scrambling for generation capacity to meet soaring electricity demand. At the same time, the severe disruption to shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has put security of supply at the top of every importer's agenda. In this special episode, recorded at Wood Mackenzie's Gas, L...

The conflict in the Middle East has created severe disruption to shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, taking roughly 20% of global supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG) off the market. It has been a reminder that hundreds of millions of people rely on the international gas trade to heat our homes, fuel our industries and keep our lights on. And that trade is highly vulnerable to sudden shocks. In this special episode, r...

America is facing an energy supply crisis created by surging demand for electricity from data centres. A transition to a lower-carbon system requires massive investment in new clean energy infrastructure. But legal and regulatory structures mean that developing projects in the US is often an uncertain, drawn-out and expensive process.

To take just one example, new transmission infrastructure is vital for connecting renewable generat...

The era of stagnant electricity demand in the US is over. Data centres, electrification, and reshoring of manufacturing are driving a surge in demand that is stronger that anything that anyone currently working in the industry has yet seen in their professional lifetimes. The question of which market and regulatory structures are needed to respond to this new and fast-changing world is now at the centre of the policy debate.

Host Ed...

The war with Iran has put a spotlight on the security and resilience of energy and supply chains around the world. In this second special episode from the ACORE Finance Forum in New York, host Ed Crooks explores what that means for the US power industry, at a moment when rising electricity demand was already putting the grid under strain.

Lori Ann LaRocco, a trade and supply chain expert and author of Trade War: Containers Don't Lie...

The numbers are staggering. The “magnificent seven” Big Tech companies are expected to have combined capital spending of about $800 billion this year. Data centres’ electricity demand is soaring, and hundreds of billions of dollars more are being mobilised to invest in power infrastructure to meet that demand. In this special episode, recorded at the ACORE Finance Forum in New York, host Ed Crooks speaks with five...

Ten weeks into the war with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. The ceasefire is officially holding, but occasional attacks on ships and installations continue. A difficult question is coming into focus: what if the strait never fully reopens?

Host Ed Crooks is joined by regular contributor Amy Myers Jaffe, Director of the Global Energy, Climate, and Sustainability Lab at NYU, alongside two guests. Edward (Eddie) Fish...

The past year has been challenging for electric vehicles. In the first quarter of 2026, US EV sales were about 27 per cent below their level in the first quarter of last year. But the ride-hailing industry still sees a future that is electric, autonomous, and shared, and is placing a multi-billion dollar bet on it. Ride-hailing services such as Uber could be one of the key sectors supporting the electrification of road transport in...