The Infrastructure Podcast: Episode 179

Guests: Javier Cavada, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Power for the EMEA region

Powering our digital future

In this episode we focus on the challenge of meeting the growing global demand for power.

The arrival of Andy Burham as Prime Minister and the latest ministerial reshuffles certainly does not undermine the government’s desire to invest in the infrastructure needed to bolster the UK’s energy supply.

But it is also clear that the acceleration of artificial intelligence, and the growth in the data centres powering the technology, has triggered a new and growing clash between the needs and aspirations of digital tech and our ability to power the reality. 

My guest this week is Javier Cavada, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Power for the EMEA region, someone who is without question at the heart of creating and delivering the technology that is capable of bridging this widening power gap.

And he knows all too well the dilemma - while so-called hyperscalers are racing to construct gigawatt-scale data centre campuses within 18 to 36 months, delivery of the high-voltage transmission lines, substations, and generation assets required to energize these facilities often takes 5-to-10-year infrastructure planning cycles. 

We therefore face an escalating "infrastructure debt"; a systemic deficit where regional grid capacity, regulatory queues, and aging distribution networks are lagging way behind the relentless power demands of modern computing.

This means that the data sector can no longer rely solely on traditional public power grids for their survival. 

Instead, navigating this bottleneck requires a fundamental transition toward a resilience-first mindset, one that fuses rapid network reinforcement and grid-enhancing technologies with on-site, so-called “behind-the-meter” generation and intelligent load balancing.

From hydrogen-ready gas turbines and large-scale battery storage to digital plant optimization and industrial heat management, the technology is there to bridge the gap. But how will it be financed and how will it be delivered at pace?

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