Knockout Stage
Morning Energy (adapted from the original published June 30, 2026)
Canada beat South Africa 1-0 Sunday with a Stephen Eustaquio strike in the 92nd minute. A big moment for soccer in our country and we are into the Round of 16 for the first time ever! Every team enters the World Cup with a reputation. Canada as a co-host with big dreams (and more tempered expectations from the pundits). But we made the knockout stage, and with the win, dreams are turning into reality.
Power markets have their own brackets. Big announcements building queues everywhere. The hard part now is filtering the contenders from the pretenders. That is where our team is spending a lot of their time.
Start with data center capacity, the clearest read. About 96% of the additions we expect in 2028 trace to projects under construction or contracted. By 2030 that share falls to 26%. The bets you can place today fade fast a few years out. Potential is not the issue. We have mapped 272 GW of it in our Sites Unseen work. Naming the winners a couple years out is the murky part, and even marquee projects slip; OpenAI and Oracle scrapped a 600 MW expansion at their Abilene Stargate campus. Sorting that out is the game we are playing.
Emerging technologies and long project queues raise the same problem in sharper form. The market prices the prospect. We try to price the proof. That gap can be the whole valuation. O&G veterans have seen it before. OGX went public in 2008 as Brazil's hottest offering, claiming exploratory success north of 90% and reserves to rival the majors, then the wells came in dry and the stock lost 99% of its value. The resource was prospective. It was never proven. Price a story as if it is solved and you underwrite the promise. Price what has been demonstrated and you underwrite the well.
ERCOT decided to charge for the filter. Batch Zero asks 197 large-load projects to put up cash, $50,000 per MW, $50 million for a gigawatt campus with $40 million at risk if you walk. Announcements are free, but deposits are not. By our count 55 advance to the next round, 21.7 GW, and the rest wait for Batch 1+. Making the bracket does not guarantee the trophy, but you have to get in to have a chance.
The rules keep moving. FERC’s June orders to all six grid operators will reshape how large loads connect. Better stay on top of that.
Canada is through the group and a knockout round. It only gets harder. Power runs the same gauntlet, except the capital commits years before the whistle. Calling which side survives is the game.
Comments, questions or things I missed? Send me a note (or hit reply) - I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading!
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