On Wednesday, June 3, Duke Energy (DUK) CEO Harry Sideris delivered a figure that cuts through the slow narrative of America’s energy sector.
Speaking at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual conference in Las Vegas last week, he said electricity demand is now growing at 10 times the rate it did for the past three decades
For most of those 30 years, American utilities’ load growth was between 0% and 0.5% annually, a pace so gradual that planning a decade ahead was routine. However, things have changed today. Growing Artificial Intelligence demands are increasing electricity consumption According to Bloomberg, Sideris expects something closer to 5% annual load growth, and the cause is something most people are familiar with.
We’ve never seen load growth like we have experienced in the last year “I’ve been with the company 30 years, and we’ve been growing between 0 and 0.5% of load, and now we are looking at 10 times that,” Sideris told Bloomberg Television. The reason behind the shift is artificial intelligence. Specifically, the explosion of AI data centers that run around the clock, consume enormous volumes of electricity, and show no signs of slowing down.