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Reuben Gregg Brewer, The Motley Fool
Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 9:53 AM 5 min read
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During Brookfield Renewable's (NYSE: BEP)(NYSE: BEPC) fourth-quarter 2024 net call, the company's CEO stated precise intelligibly that, "Following respective decades of humble energy request growth, we are experiencing a melodramatic displacement successful request driven by the AI revolution." That's fundamentally the aforesaid sentiment that's being expressed by energy providers crossed the committee and it highlights an accidental for investors broadly and income investors specifically.
Brookfield's CEO went connected to explicate that helium believes artificial quality (AI) is "one of, if not the most, important advancement successful exertion successful our lifetime." That whitethorn precise good beryllium true, but past is filled with monolithic technological advances and the concern lessons aren't great. Very precocious determination was the advancement of electrical vehicles (EV), with Tesla effectively creating an full caller industry.
There was large excitement astatine first, with a big of companies attempting to travel Tesla's pb and physique EV companies from the crushed up. Only galore of those companies person present gone bankrupt. The ones that person survived experienced monolithic banal spikes aboriginal connected erstwhile Wall Street was enamored with the EV story. But galore person mislaid 90% oregon much of their worth arsenic investors realized that not each EV institution was going to beryllium a winner.
The aforesaid communicative unfolded with net stocks astatine the crook of the century. Yes, immoderate precise important companies were created and they are present giants successful the manufacture and successful implicit terms, including Alphabet. But don't hide that Google rival Yahoo! has suffered done worldly difficulties and it didn't enactment retired precise good for investors. And determination were galore different one-time net darlings that flamed retired entirely.
If past is immoderate guide, it volition beryllium precise hard to correctly prime the fewer AI stocks that volition extremity up winners. But determination is 1 happening that each AI victor volition request a batch of: electricity.
Perhaps the safest mode to play the AI energy request summation is with a regulated electrical utility. Regulated utilities are granted monopolies successful the areas they serve, truthful they person a beauteous beardown caput commencement erstwhile it comes to supplying AI's needs. But determination are large and tiny utilities, truthful determination are inactive antithetic ways to play this angle.
For example, manufacture elephantine Dominion Energy (NYSE: D) has seen an 88% summation successful involvement from information centers for energy successful its Virginia based inferior operations since conscionable July 2024. Virginia happens to beryllium an important hub for information centers, which besides enactment AI. Dominion, which has a lofty dividend output of 4.8%, is moving done a concern turnaround and its dividend has been static for a mates of years. Spiking energy request driven by AI could get the dividend backmost connected the maturation track. But you'll beryllium paid precise good to hold adjacent if the instrumentality to dividend maturation takes a small while.