View / The US gets riskier for energy investors

Energy policy vacillation in the US is spooking investors and leaving the country less prepared to compete in the global economy.

US oil and gas production has been effective at insulating its consumers from the worst impacts of the Strait of Hormuz closure, global business and government leaders have told me onstage and in closed-door sessions here at Semafor World Economy. But there has also been a consensus that dirt-cheap electricity — put another way, dollars per unit of AI processing power — is the most important metric for future economic competitiveness.

China’s edge is already huge: “If this is going to be a race between China and the US to build energy, we might as well call it a day,” Joe Dominguez, CEO of the power company Constellation, said onstage. “We are very far behind.”

So how can the US catch up? The data center race looks like a powerful force to drive more investment into the nation’s energy system, and Wall Street types are confident there’s no shortage of capital poised to pour in. But a lot of it is waiting on the sidelines for the mess of US energy bureaucracy to get sorted out: Permits that are granted and withdrawn capriciously, tax credits that come and go, technologies that fall in or out of favor in successive administrations, and endless legal battles all amount to dangerous barriers to investment. Energy executives and policymakers in roundtables I have led — hardly climate activists — widely agreed that political opposition to renewables is shortsighted and counterproductive. The US, one said, had gone from NIMBY (not in my backyard) to BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone).

In that sense, the battle between the US and China isn’t only the petrostate-vs-electrostate dynamic, although that is certainly real, but a tussle over which country looks like a more stable investment climate. And I was surprised to hear several times from policymakers and project developers that, in the power sector, the US investment risk profile increasingly resembles that of an emerging market in Africa or South Asia.

That may be overstating the case a little, but at this point the US can’t afford any delays — especially as the war in Iran accelerates global demand for Chinese renewables. “The greatest changes in energy have come when there have been the biggest disruptions,” former US climate envoy and Iran negotiator John Kerry told me. “No one really understands how much energy is going to change after this.”