In the boardrooms of America’s energy giants, a quiet revolution is developing to reshape how we generate electricity and who controls the digital economy. Talen Energy’s shares surged 20 per cent on Thursday after announcing $3.5 billion in acquisitions of gas-fired power plants, seemingly to meet “growing demand from data centres”. Yet this seemingly straightforward transaction reveals a significant transformation that energy companies are abandoning their traditional role as utilities and turning themselves into the infrastructure backbone of artificial intelligence.

Data centres consumed 4.4 per cent of total US electricity in 2023, a figure the Department of Energy projects will reach between 6.7 and 12 per cent by 2028, but these projections, dramatic as they appear, understate the true scope of the transformation. The White House warned this week that electricity prices could spike by 9 to 58 per cent by 2030 without massive new energy investment, requiring $1.4 trillion in additional infrastructure.