Dear Fellow Investor,
The Fed held rates steady this week.
You'll hear that headline buzzing around.
What you won't hear is the number that actually matters — a number no interest rate decision can fix.
7x.
That's what just happened to electricity costs across 13 states.
The PJM Interconnection — the grid operator that keeps the lights on for 67 million Americans from New Jersey to Illinois — runs a bulk power auction every year to guarantee there's enough generation capacity to meet demand.
The previous auction cost $2.2 billion.
The next one came in at $14.7 billion.
Same region. Same lights. Same 67 million customers.
Nearly seven times the price.
It wasn't inflation. It wasn't oil. It had nothing to do with anything the Federal Reserve controls.
It was electricity demand — driven almost entirely by one thing.
The Machine That Eats the Grid
Artificial intelligence runs on data centers. Data centers run on power. And the numbers are staggering.
Nearly 2,300 gigawatts of new power capacity are currently stuck in America's interconnection queue — waiting years just to plug into the grid.
That's more than five times the output of every nuclear reactor on the planet.
A single advanced AI data center draws as much electricity as 80,000 homes. Hundreds are under construction right now, with hundreds more planned.
Goldman Sachs projects the largest technology companies will spend a combined $736 billion on data centers by year's end.
And here's the part that should concern you:
Some of the most sophisticated companies on Earth — the ones building the infrastructure for every AI product you use — are running diesel generators as emergency backups just to keep the servers online.
Diesel. In 2026.
Come on…
That's not a technology problem. It's a power problem.
And it's getting worse by the quarter.
Why Every Easy Answer Falls Short
Solar panels generate electricity like 25% of the time.
Data centers need power at 3 AM the same as 3 PM.
Wind turbines produce roughly 35% of the time.
Algorithms don't pause when the air goes still.
Nuclear seemed like the answer until NuScale — America's most advanced small modular reactor project — spent $9.3 billion, generated zero watts, and was cancelled entirely.
Natural gas would work from an engineering standpoint, but Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta have each made legally binding commitments to 24/7 carbon-free energy — written into SEC filings, subject to shareholder litigation if violated.
Every conventional energy source is either too intermittent, too expensive, too slow to build, or contractually off-limits.
Which leaves exactly one path.
4.5 Billion Years of Free Fuel
There is one energy source that runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, regardless of weather, season, or time zone.
Zero fuel costs — its heat source is the Earth's core, a natural reactor that's been running since the planet formed.
Zero carbon emissions.
And it can be built next to the point of demand, bypassing the clogged grid entirely.
Geothermal energy.
Now, forget what you think you know about geothermal - because a lot’s changed in the last 12 months…
In June 2025, a drilling crew in Beaver County, Utah, punched through 15,765 feet of granite in 16 days —
A job the Department of Energy estimated would take 64.
They did it using the same rigs, the same workers, and the same fracturing techniques that made America the world's largest oil producer.
That was Project FORGE — a federally funded proving ground that demonstrated enhanced geothermal can now be deployed at scale.
The shale revolution's playbook, turned loose on limitless heat.
Google was paying attention.
In February of this year, it signed a 15-year contract for 150 megawatts of geothermal capacity to power its Nevada data centers — one of the most significant clean energy deals the company has ever made.
A major data center operator separately locked in a 20-year agreement for the same type of power.
The smart money isn't debating which energy source wins…
It's already signing checks.
“The Buck Stops Here,”
Found this helpful? Share it with others.
Written by Dylan Jovine