Earnings Calls Paint Dramatic Energy Growth Picture

After years of slow growth, utilities and power generators are now planning for massive demand increases.

It was one of the big themes of fourth-quarter earnings season: a sea change in demand growth, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence, that will lift sales for both regulated utilities and wholesale generators for years to come in Texas and beyond.

Usually, independent generators’ sales are hard to predict because they move with electricity prices, while regulated utilities’ sales are among the most predictable – and predictably uninspiring – of any industry.

AI has changed that. Now, both utilities and independent power producers are raking in lucrative long-term supply deals from tech giants desperate to feed AI’s electricity-hungry silicon brain.

On its recent fourth-quarter earnings call, CenterPoint Energy Chief Executive Jason Wells said that by 2029, the Houston-area utility expects peak load in Greater Houston to grow 50 percent from 2025 levels. That’s two years earlier than the company had estimated in October.

Wells also reiterated CenterPoint’s projection that through 2028, annual operating earnings growth should sit at the high end of the company’s 7 percent-to-9 percent long-term target. CenterPoint also anticipates it will surpass its previous estimate of 11 percent compound annual growth in its base rate revenue.

These startling projections generally track ERCOT’s load growth projections. The grid operator’s long-term forecast, released in August, shows peak summer demand rising from 87 gigawatts in 2025 to 145 GW in the summer of 2031. That rapid growth includes 24 gigawatts of load for data centers and 8.5 gigawatts for cryptocurrency operations. The rest comes from industrial expansion, oil and gas, and population growth.