Each January, when the arrives in town, Davos’ promenade shifts from a charming ski-resort main street to a corporate showcase. The world’s largest companies take over storefronts with sleek displays—signals to investors, policymakers, and peers about their top priorities.
Six years ago, the promenade was a stage for ESG and climate initiatives. This year, AI was ubiquitous—apparently overshadowing climate. But beyond the polished exhibits, a different conversation gained traction among tech firms, investors, and project developers: AI will to expand. Unlocking its potential means investing in and partnering with energy companies that can deliver fast, reliable power.
This has long been seen as a climate problem—more energy equals more emissions. But it should really be viewed as a climate opportunity. As companies pour hundreds of billions into AI, they’re also directing similar sums toward energy. And many firms positioned to meet this demand are simultaneously building clean-energy technologies that could decarbonize the grid.
“This is one of the largest procurement budgets in history,” says Chase Lochmiller, CEO of Crusoe—a data center developer known for prioritizing power supply from the start. “It can send a massive demand signal for emerging new energy technologies.”
The key question now is how much these new low-carbon technologies can outpace the growth of gas generation.
In some ways, this insight isn’t new. Over the past two years, as U.S. electricity demand rose, power companies shared an optimistic narrative: expanding capacity to meet this need would let them invest in clean energy. But what stood out to me at Davos this month was how AI’s heavy capital requirements turned this from utility talking points into a genuine investment thesis driven by strong market enthusiasm.
To understand this excitement, look at the companies leading the conversation. Standout players included Bloom Energy, which builds fuel cells for on-site power generation—its stock is up 500% in the past year. Major firms are also riding the wave: at Davos, Schneider Electric and Johnson Controls highlighted their efficiency technologies, with their stocks rising too. Constellation Energy, whose stock doubled in two years, spoke about nuclear power’s bright future as data center developers race to buy its low-carbon electricity.
Another observation from Davos was the role of data center developers. In the wider climate discourse, tech companies and data center builders are often cast as villains for creating new emission sources. While this holds some truth, they also represent a of demand for clean power—especially in the U.S.—at a time when political winds aren’t favorable to green initiatives. “The top factor for building new data centers is access to land with ideally clean power,” said Abhijit Dubey, president and CEO of NTT DATA, during a TIME panel in Davos. “Do we have actual clean power available? That defines where we build data centers.”
To be clear, despite what some dedicated data center developers say, a large portion of new electricity demand in the U.S.—the world’s biggest data center market—will be met by gas power. Washington has also used data center expansion as a pretext to keep coal-fired plants online.
Yet one point I keep returning to in 2026 is that from an emissions standpoint, the U.S. isn’t the only critical region—even as data centers pose fresh decarbonization challenges. If today’s investments make clean energy cheaper and more reliable than fossil fuels, the AI boom might accelerate global decarbonization, even with near-term emission issues in the U.S.
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