Goldman discusses how significant the increased power demand driven by AI will be. By Investing.com

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to revolutionize industries, important questions arise. How much energy does technology require?

In a recent research note, Goldman Sachs took a closer look at the potential impact of AI on global electricity demand. The bank’s Global Investment Research (GIR) team has released a sector-specific report discussing how global data center power demand is expected to more than double by 2030, accelerating the US power demand CAGR of 2.4%.

Analysts forecast data center electricity demand to grow at a CAGR of 15% from 2023 to 2030, with data centers expected to account for 8% of total U.S. electricity demand by 2030, up from about 3% today.

“Analysts expect this to drive cumulative capital investment of approximately $50 billion in U.S. power generation capacity by 2030, assuming a 60/40 ratio of gas to renewables,” Goldman said.

According to the bank, long interconnection queues remain a problem when connecting new projects to the grid. They believe that expediting the permitting/approval process for transmission projects will be key to mitigating this.

“The most important constraints to keep in mind for natural gas are construction and permitting timelines, which analysts believe lead to an average delay of about four years from project announcement date to in-service date. This means that if announced today, the fastest capacity addition would not be possible. This means it will be in service until ~2028,” the bank says.

“New generations of AI servers consume more power and deliver more computing speeds, although power intensity has fallen meaningfully,” adds Goldman. “If appetite for server purchases and utilization remains unrestricted, there could be a meaningful upside to analysts’ base cases.”

Based on energy demand projections, the Goldman Sachs research team sees beneficiaries in two areas: “1) Demand Growth Beneficiaries – Companies including unregulated power producers, gas companies, and energy storage companies that provide power solutions to corporate data centers leveraged for power demand/prices; and 2) Supply Chain/Infrastructure Beneficiaries – Enterprises. .”

First Solar (NASDAQ:), a large domestic panel manufacturer, appears to be benefiting from the increase in utility-scale projects needed to support growing demand.

meantime, child morgan (NYSE:) is believed to be “particularly well positioned” to benefit from increased demand for natural gas.

“Power demand from data centers will drive natural gas demand growth to ~3.3 bcf/d by 2030, which is approximately a 10% increase in the amount of gas consumed in the power market compared to today. KMI is the largest transporter. US gas, which has significant market share in key regions such as Texas, will account for much of this growth,” concluded Goldman Sachs.