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Odd Lots

How to Make Money From the Booming Demand for Energy

51 min episode · 2 min read
·
Tyler Rosenlicht

Episode

51 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Investing, Fundraising & VC, Science & Discovery

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Utility valuation opportunity: Best-in-class utilities growing 8.5% annually trade only 6% more expensive than average utilities growing 6.5%, versus an 11% premium historically, creating mispriced opportunities despite regulatory and affordability concerns in some markets.
  • Global energy demand trajectory: World energy consumption rises from 178,000 terawatt hours today to 220,000 by 2040, requiring addition of 55,000 terawatt hours from renewables alone—equivalent to recreating the entire century-old global oil industry in sixteen years.
  • Data center impact varies dramatically: Some utilities see bills rise 15% with no local economic benefit, triggering political backlash, while others with excess generation capacity can add data centers that lower residential bills by spreading fixed costs across more customers.
  • Nuclear renaissance timeline: Phase one stops shutdowns (seventh inning), phase two restarts facilities like Three Mile Island (fifth inning), phase three builds brownfield expansions by 2032-2035 (second inning), with government cost-overrun backstops enabling new greenfield plants by 2040.

What It Covers

Tyler Rosenlicht from Cohen and Steers explains how surging energy demand from data centers and industrial growth creates investment opportunities in utilities, pipelines, and infrastructure, while regulatory and affordability risks create significant dispersion in outcomes.

Key Questions Answered

  • Utility valuation opportunity: Best-in-class utilities growing 8.5% annually trade only 6% more expensive than average utilities growing 6.5%, versus an 11% premium historically, creating mispriced opportunities despite regulatory and affordability concerns in some markets.
  • Global energy demand trajectory: World energy consumption rises from 178,000 terawatt hours today to 220,000 by 2040, requiring addition of 55,000 terawatt hours from renewables alone—equivalent to recreating the entire century-old global oil industry in sixteen years.
  • Data center impact varies dramatically: Some utilities see bills rise 15% with no local economic benefit, triggering political backlash, while others with excess generation capacity can add data centers that lower residential bills by spreading fixed costs across more customers.
  • Nuclear renaissance timeline: Phase one stops shutdowns (seventh inning), phase two restarts facilities like Three Mile Island (fifth inning), phase three builds brownfield expansions by 2032-2035 (second inning), with government cost-overrun backstops enabling new greenfield plants by 2040.

Notable Moment

One Midwest utility took 100 years to build 11 gigawatts of capacity (roughly 11 million people served), but now faces data center demand requests totaling 15 additional gigawatts, illustrating the unprecedented scale and speed of infrastructure buildout requirements.

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Episode Transcript

Markets move fast. Get the insights you need in ten minutes with Barclays Brief, a podcast from Barclays Investment Bank. Each week, our experts analyze market themes, helping you anticipate what's next. Listen to Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts. As a contractor, I don't pay for materials I don't use. So why would I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan? That's why My Biz Plan from Verizon Business is so perfect. Now I can choose exactly what I want, and I only pay for what I need. Right now with My Biz Plan, get our best price as as low as $25 a line. Visit verizon.com/business to get started today. New lines only. Price per month with five plus lines. Includes autopay and paper free billing and promotional discounts, taxes fees, economic adjustment charge, applicable add ons, prices, and terms apply. Guarantee applies to base monthly rate and stated discounts only. Add on prices additional offers in 03/31/2026. Support for the show comes from Public. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index, and lets you back test it against the S and P 500, then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/market. Paid for by Public Investing, brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA and SIPC, advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC registered adviser. Generated assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com/disclosures. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, I saw an interesting headline this morning. Just one? Good point. I saw a million interesting headlines, But one that sort of caught my eye, it was sort of market moving, is, there was this comment from, Jensen Wong, who's at a conference, the CES conference, and he was talking about how in the future, I guess, their chips are getting more efficient as chips tend to do, that they may not need as much intense cooling infrastructure or cooling equipment for future data centers. And a bunch of those, like, cooling names, like Trane Technology, they're, like, really getting clobbered because we know those have been, like, some of the big winners from the AI boom. I can hear all the …

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