As global AI capital investments accelerate, power constraints and community opposition have replaced traditional site factors like fiber availability and tax incentives as the primary bottlenecks in digital infrastructure. A one-year delay on a 100 MW AI data center can result in over $1 billion in deferred or lost revenue for AI model providers and $235 million in lost lease revenue for colocation operators.

This Accenture whitepaper outlines why traditional, transactional power requests no longer work and introduces a four-part framework to accelerate energization and de-risk development:

• Site for power: Follow existing grid headroom and brownfield assets, not just land or tax perks
• Earn trust: Mitigate local rate, water, and noise concerns early using Community Benefit Agreements
• Design flexibly: Pool power, store energy, and orchestrate workloads to eliminate stranded capacity
• Co-plan capacity: Trade rigid capacity requests for flexible utility partnerships to cut wait times by 3–5 years