Wood Mackenzie: US energy equipment market to triple to $65 billion by 2030

The American market for power generation equipment will triple by 2030 and reach $65 billion. Analytics company Wood Mackenzie names data centers serving artificial intelligence infrastructure as the main growth driver.

What the Wood Mackenzie Report Shows

Wood Mackenzie has recorded an unprecedented shift in the American energy sector. According to analysts' estimates, by 2030 the US will triple spending on equipment for power generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity. Today this market is valued at approximately $21–22 billion — by the end of the decade it will grow to $65 billion.

Data centers could account for up to 40% of aggregate investments in new power equipment. This is not simply a "notable" segment — it is a structural shift. Just a few years ago, data centers were considered a niche electricity consumer.

Today they are becoming a systemic client for the entire industry: from generation to the last mile of distribution. In absolute figures, this represents $26 billion from data center demand alone — more than the entire current US power equipment market.

Why AI Requires So Much Electricity

Modern language models are trained on clusters of tens of thousands of GPUs. A single such cluster consumes hundreds of megawatts continuously — comparable to the consumption of a small industrial city. After training comes inference: continuous model operation in response to requests from millions of users.

The largest technology companies — Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Meta — have announced multi-year programs for building new data centers across the country. Aggregate investments are measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. Each facility requires its own high-voltage substation, kilometers of cables, power transformers, and backup power sources.

Demand is growing faster than the supply chain can respond. Lead times for power transformers in the US have increased from several months to two to three years. It is impossible to expand production in the short term — these are multi-year capital-intensive projects.

Who Will Benefit

The tripling of the market creates specific growth opportunities for several categories of players:

• Power transformer manufacturers — the most scarce segment; order backlogs are overflowing years in advance
• Cable companies — each major data center requires laying kilometers of high-voltage cables
• Engineering and construction contractors — design and installation of substations, connection points to backbone networks
• UPS and backup generator manufacturers — backup power is mandatory by regulation for any data center
• Energy storage companies — battery storage systems are used as a buffer during peak loads

In parallel, government support is strengthening. US authorities are subsidizing construction of new generating capacity, including small modular nuclear reactors, to ensure stable baseload power for energy-intensive AI facilities.

What This Means

The AI revolution requires not just chips and algorithms — it is built on tons of copper, steel, and transformer oil. Physical energy infrastructure is becoming as strategically important as the language models themselves. Companies able to quickly deliver electrical equipment will find themselves at the center of the next investment cycle — regardless of who ultimately wins the race in AI models.