As AI-driven compute demand accelerates, data centers are becoming strategic infrastructure assets whose success depends not only on construction speed and capital availability, but also on reliable power, clean energy procurement, grid access, site selection, connectivity to fiber network, supply-chain resilience, cybersecurity, and cross-border ownership considerations.

This panel will examine how developers, investors, utilities, lenders, regulators, and public-sector stakeholders are responding to the energy intensity of data centers, including grid interconnection constraints, behind-the-meter generation in microgrid formations, hybrid energy solutions, and emerging technologies such as small modular reactors and enhanced geothermal.

Discussion will also include topics like:
• Transatlantic collaboration: why it matters and how it can be strengthened
• Security considerations and maintaining EU–US leadership in technology and infrastructure buildout
• FDI and national security screening
• Critical infrastructure designation
• The state of EU semiconductor capabilities (CPUs, GPUs, and emerging technologies)
• Opportunities for joint R&D partnerships
• Modular data centers and modular energy systems
• Energy demand, grid constraints, and transmission challenges
• Electrification beyond data centers and its broader economic development impacts
• Supply chain exposure and vulnerability
• Insurance pricing pressures
• Customer concentration risks
• Capital availability and evolving financing structures
• Lender remedies and related financial constraints
• The role of reimagined public private structures in enabling energy intensive digital infrastructure
• Planning for future technologies and long‑term infrastructure needs
• Challenges and opportunities related to workforce and talent

Attendees will leave with a practical understanding of the commercial, legal, technical, and policy issues that now determine whether data center capacity can be delivered at scale, on time, and in a manner resilient enough for the transatlantic digital economy.

 

SPEAKERS:
• Daniel Broom, Director – U.S. Government Relations, GLOBAL FOUNDRIES
• Matthew Futch, Global VP – Data Centers, WORLEY
• Jane Rueger, Partner, ASHURST PERKINS COIE
Additional speaker(s) will be announced soon