The next industrial contest is for electricity

Dr. Wang Zhiqiang writes that the next phase of industrial competition will be a contest for electricity, as AI data centres, advanced manufacturing, mining, transport and industrial processes become more electricity-intensive, and sums the test up in four terms: cost, reliability, scale and time to power.

The IEA report Energy and AI, published in 2025, puts numbers on the pressure: data centres consumed around 415 TWh in 2024, close to 1.5% of world electricity, and are set to more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030. The same report estimates that, unless the bottlenecks are addressed, about 20% of planned projects risk delay, with transmission build times of four to eight years in advanced economies.

Time to power has an owner and a price tag. The connection line and substation are upfront investment someone funds before the data centre earns anything, and who that someone is depends on each country's access rules. Where connection cost falls on the applicant, the project puts up equity; where it is socialised, it lands in the tariff.

For Brazil, that is where the available advantage sits. Abundant clean power answers cost and scale; the connection timetable answers the rest. Whoever offers a connection point with firm capacity and a fixed date competes for that load even without the lowest MWh price.