ClearBridge sees global utilities at the heart of policy-driven AI boom
Charles Hamieh
ClearBridge Investments, a leading global equities investment manager, has highlighted what it sees as one of the most powerful intersections of policy and technology in decades, pointing to accelerating legislative change and the surging electricity demands of artificial intelligence as catalysts for a multi-decade investment opportunity in listed utilities.
Charles Hamieh, portfolio manager at ClearBridge Investments, said new legislation in the United States and a shift in fiscal priorities across Europe are reshaping how infrastructure is funded, with profound implications for listed infrastructure.
“We are entering one of the most significant periods of change for infrastructure policy in decades,” Hamieh said. “These changes are redefining, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically both how projects are financed and how quickly asset bases are growing.”
In the US, the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) has restructured aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act, curbing incentives for renewables while simultaneously offering developers a stable, front-loaded development window to secure tax credits.
Hamieh said while the OBBB narrows the scope of policy stimulus, it avoids major setbacks for renewables. “What it lacks in scale, it makes up for in stability,” he said, adding that utilities and renewables operators with strong balance sheets and resilient supply chains stand to benefit.
Meanwhile, Europe is moving in the opposite direction, with NATO member states committing to a target of 5% of GDP for defense and security-related spending by 2035. This translates into potentially €2 trillion of infrastructure spending over the next decade and a half, ranging from resilient energy grids for military bases to new transport corridors. Germany’s newly announced €500 billion fiscal package is set to turbocharge infrastructure investment in energy, utilities and transportation over the next 12 years.
Hamieh noted, “The implications for listed infrastructure are significant, particularly in attracting private capital alongside public commitments.”
ClearBridge also sees a clear global trend: private capital is increasingly stepping into the role once dominated by governments. With corporate balance sheets and institutional investors providing the lion’s share of infrastructure financing, asset bases for regulated utilities and contracted infrastructure are expanding rapidly. This dynamic is being supercharged by technological change.
The explosive rise of AI-driven data centers and cloud computing is transforming electricity demand. A single hyperscale data center now consumes as much electricity as 80,000 homes, creating enormous pressure on utilities to expand and modernise grids. “AI and digital transformation are fueling an unprecedented surge in power demand,” Hamieh said. “This requires massive capital deployment into generation, transmission and integration of new technologies, which creates a structural growth runway for listed utilities.”
The pace of utility growth has already doubled in a decade, with asset base expansion rates climbing from 4–5% annually to 8–10% today. By the early 2030s, Hamieh expects this could rise to 12–15%, levels likely to be sustained for a decade. “The winners will be companies with the financial strength, operational capability and strategic foresight to stay ahead of the policy curve,” he said.
For investors, the message is clear. Accelerating policy shifts and AI-driven demand are creating a rare alignment of forces that could redefine infrastructure investing for decades. “We believe listed utilities globally are uniquely positioned to benefit,” Hamieh said.
