Media
Data Centers Fuel Record Spending on U.S. Energy Infrastructure
July 02, 2025
When it comes to building data centers, one requirement towers above all others: power. While land, materials, labor, access, water, and permits are all essential for property development, the insatiable energy demands of data centers set them apart from almost any other type of project.
The sheer volume of electricity required to power servers and networking equipment defines the limits of what a data center can accomplish. As artificial intelligence, massive data analysis and other forms of high-powered computation become more central to the digital economy, U.S. energy groups are racing to keep up. The Financial Times reported that U.S. utility capital expenditures are expected to soar to $212.1 billion in 2025—a 22.3% increase over the previous year and a staggering 129% jump from 2015, according to investment bank Jefferies.
“Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen a relative paucity of new investment,” Julien Dumoulin-Smith, a power utilities and clean energy analyst at Jefferies, told the Financial Times. “We’re now seeing a very meaningful shift and should see a sharp uptick as data center deployment accelerates.”
This surge in data center development is reshaping the real estate landscape. “This is a real estate accommodation of a wave of technology that is now morphing from the cloud and server farms of a few years ago to AI,” Marcus & Millichap CEO Hessam Nadji explained during a January appearance on CNBC. "Only 20% of the current capacity is AI-oriented, and just think about how much AI is going to grow.”
Read the Full Article
The sheer volume of electricity required to power servers and networking equipment defines the limits of what a data center can accomplish. As artificial intelligence, massive data analysis and other forms of high-powered computation become more central to the digital economy, U.S. energy groups are racing to keep up. The Financial Times reported that U.S. utility capital expenditures are expected to soar to $212.1 billion in 2025—a 22.3% increase over the previous year and a staggering 129% jump from 2015, according to investment bank Jefferies.
“Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen a relative paucity of new investment,” Julien Dumoulin-Smith, a power utilities and clean energy analyst at Jefferies, told the Financial Times. “We’re now seeing a very meaningful shift and should see a sharp uptick as data center deployment accelerates.”
This surge in data center development is reshaping the real estate landscape. “This is a real estate accommodation of a wave of technology that is now morphing from the cloud and server farms of a few years ago to AI,” Marcus & Millichap CEO Hessam Nadji explained during a January appearance on CNBC. "Only 20% of the current capacity is AI-oriented, and just think about how much AI is going to grow.”
