How to Make Money From the Booming Demand for Energy

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.