I don't see evidence this is true, and the critical mass of data centers is making electricity cheaper. Economies of scale -> more energy = bigger electric plants = cheaper energy.
https://netchoice.org/new-study-confirms-what-weve-been-sayi...
Problem is; power plants are not something that can be spun up with a kubectl invocation.
Power plants need to be built. This process takes YEARS, and in some cases over a decade. And that's just the plants themselves. The grid also has to be built out to be able to handle the new load.
And while this potentially +10year process is ongoing, the current supply is gobbled up, and prices for consumers skyrocket.
Yes, eventuelly, market forces may solve the issue. By then however, it will already be too late for many areas, with residents being priced out of a basic utility.
Or worse, the markets may not solve the issue at all.
Because; all this building out of electrical gear and power plants, requires very specific resources and talent. Whta if the markets decide that these resources are much better allocated (at least from the PoV of company shareholders), in building power generation capacity exclusively for datacenters, and the consumer market is simply ignored?
Yes and... it's still a projected ~50/50 split of future datacenter energy growth being met by renewables or coal (China) + natural gas (US). https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-...
This isn't true. Certainly not globally. Because electricity in 2026 is converting finite and scares resources. Plants need fuel to burn, water to cool, material to build, land to sit on, etc. Yes, even Nuclear plants¹ need increasingly more scarce resources like "coolant".
What has been bringing electricity prices down is renewables: insane amounts of solar and wind being installed hourly. But even with that, we are still lagging, globally: energy prices are -on average- rising, projects halted or stalled because of lack of electrical capacity and ever increasing amounts of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. Not less. Not cheaper. Not more supply.
¹ https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260712-france-temporari...
We should be cognizant of the environmental impact of producing more energy, but it still remains true that making more energy means cheaper energy across the resources we have today.
Energy prices, and electricity prices are rising, indexed for inflation. For households and for commerce.
One does not need to look very far.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/13/utah-approve...
> The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes