How Shanu framed the incentives analysis

The bottleneck holding back AI is a scarcity of power, or so goes the story. That may be true — and plenty of reporting backs it up — but different actors in the space face varying incentives to play up or play down that narrative. 

So what incentives are at play, and how do they shape each player's story?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Shanu Mathew, senior vice president and portfolio manager-analyst for U.S, sustainable equity at Lazard. Last month on X, he posted a breakdown of the actors — including hyperscalers, chip makers, utilities, and others – and how the different incentives they face shape how they talk about energy and AI. They cover topics like:

• Hyperscalers’ mixed incentives: the benefits of building their own capacity vs encouraging others to overbuild

• Why equipment makers, chipmakers, and land developers benefit from talking up the bottleneck to boost demand for their services

• How independent power producers and gas players benefit from high prices

• How the power-bottleneck narrative has shifted over time

Resources:

• Latitude Media: ERCOT’s large load queue has nearly quadrupled in a single year  

• Latitude Media: The power bottleneck is changing data center financing

• Latitude Media: Early-stage data centers are driving up US power demand forecasts  

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. 

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

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