The race for power is hunting for electricity — and Europe is in its path

“Knowledge is power,” the old saying goes. In today’s world, power lies in the ability to process information. And information processing at scale is not abstract, it is energy. It is electricity.

The equation is unforgiving. The more electricity a company, state or nation can access, the more data-processing capacity it can build. The more capacity it can build, the faster its advantage grows. In this race, electricity is not a supporting input. It is strategic capital.

The numbers make the shift hard to ignore. Twenty-five years ago, China produced around 1,000 terawatt-hours of electricity a year. The European Union produced around 3,000 TWh and the United States around 4,000 TWh. The West was ahead. Since then, the EU and the US have remained roughly at the same levels. China, however, now produces around 10,000 TWh. (Source: HS, 6 August 2026.)

China did not simply catch up with the West. It ran past us and kept going.

Here in Europe, the scale of this change can still be difficult to grasp. Everyday life continues much as before: coffee tastes just fine, trains run on time, and routines continue. That is exactly why the shift is so easy to underestimate. While the surface remains familiar, the foundations of global economic and geopolitical power are being reorganised at speed.

I’d argue that one reason behind the Trump administration’s “drill-baby-drill” policy is a recognition of this new reality. China has already broken away, and the United States is now trying to build as much additional electricity generation as it can. Data centres are rising at record pace, but bottlenecks in the electricity system are appearing across the entire value chain. Inertia has consequences: slowness creates more slowness. Meanwhile, China keeps widening the gap.

So where does the race turn next? To the places where electricity and new generation capacity are still available, or can still be built.

Increasingly, that means Europe. US data and energy companies of all sizes are moving toward the European market. At Korkia, we see this directly: the phone is ringing more often as data-processing facilities search urgently for electricity, also in Finland. These are unusually strange times, but they are also exceptionally interesting ones.

For Europe, this creates a strategic choice that cannot be avoided. Do we become a resource base for others: a place where the data hunger of great powers comes to secure cheap electricity while the value is created elsewhere? Or do we take an active role, build our own electricity and production capacity, and stay in the race with the leaders? Passivity is also a choice. It simply means allowing the choice to be made for us.

This does not have to mean a return to coal and gas. Europe has the ability to build cleaner and smarter, and to turn electricity generation into a competitive advantage. The question is whether we are prepared to move with the speed and seriousness the moment requires.

At Korkia, we are part of this wave. We can develop sites for data-processing operators where energy supply is secured as well as possible locally. Done right, this strengthens security of supply, avoids unnecessary strain on the grid and minimises competition with other electricity demand. This kind of bottleneck-clearing approach is increasingly what the market is looking for.

Time will tell whether the West has already lost the race for data. But in all honesty, we are badly behind.

The task now is not to stare at the lead. It is to close it, concretely, project by project and kilowatt-hour by kilowatt-hour.

Whoever builds electricity generation builds power.

WRITER

Mikko Kantero​

Executive Vice President, Portfolio Management & Growth