Andrew Power on economic impact
From Andy Power at The Energy Future Forum 2026 · · National Center for Energy Analytics
“The data center industry in the US is bigger than the automobile industry in terms of workers today. We're big contributors for taxes that gives the best schools, teachers, sports fields, roads, you name it. Our business consumes less than the water consumption of 18 California golf courses and there's 16,000 golf courses just the United States.”
On , Andrew Power, President, CEO & Director at Digital Realty, spoke about economic impact during Andy Power at The Energy Future Forum 2026 on National Center for Energy Analytics.
About Andrew Power
Andy Power, President and CEO of Digital Realty, has been active in public forums and earnings calls discussing the company's growth and the broader data center industry. At The Energy Future Forum 2026, Power described Digital Realty as a company "solely focused on building, owning and operating data centers" and stated that the industry is "at such a much important time." He said the company is "investing alongside the utilities to strengthen the grid" and noted that the data center industry in the US "is bigger than the automobile industry in terms of workers today." Power also stated that Digital Realty's 300 data centers "consumes less than the water consumption of 18 California golf courses." On earnings calls from Q1 2025 through Q1 2026, Power reported record financial and operational results. He described the first quarter of 2026 as a "record start" and said the company signed "the largest single lease in digital realy history this quarter, a 200 megawatt AI inference-oriented lease with a double A rated hyperscaler in Charlotte." Power stated that the company's development pipeline "scaled by more than 60% to 16.5 billion" and that Digital Realty has "roughly three gigawatts" of operating capacity with another "6 gigawatts that we own today." He also noted the successful raise of an inaugural hyperscale data center fund, saying it "improves our strategic position by enabling us to continue to meet the growing and diverse needs of our hyperscale customers without overtaxing our balance sheet."