Power Play | Mini-Series Issue #1 | September 2026
Hello friend,
It’s been a while.
Over the past several months, I’ve been working with Quartz on a new six-part investigation into one of the biggest questions sitting underneath the AI boom: Where is all the power going to come from?
That investigation became Power Play, launching September 15.
Before the first episodes drop, I wanted to give you a look at what we’ve been digging into, and why it matters.
So, how much power are we talking about?
That’s part of the problem: nobody really knows.
Credible forecasts for how much electricity AI will need by 2030 sit a factor of five apart. That’s a pretty big gap when utilities are already being asked to plan for that demand now.
New power generation, new transmission and major grid upgrades can take years to build, cost billions of dollars and stay on customers’ bills for decades.
So utilities are facing a strange problem: they have to make long-term infrastructure decisions before anyone really knows how big the demand will be.
That tension is what got us interested, and where our investigation started.
A first look at Power Play
Quartz reporters spent months digging into what sits behind those wildly different forecasts, and what happens when utilities have to act on them anyway.
How are utilities estimating future AI demand? What happens if those forecasts are wrong? Who carries the risk? Who pays for what gets built? And who stands to benefit either way?
Those questions took the investigation well beyond electricity use alone, into the money, infrastructure and politics shaping the buildout.
Coming September 15
The first two episodes of Power Play launch September 15, with four more following over the weeks ahead.
Over the course of the series, we’ll dig into the money, physics and politics behind the buildout, and what all of this could mean for the people, companies and communities caught up in it.
We’ll also be sharing more from the investigation here as the series unfolds.
Stay tuned for more from Power Play.