THE DISPATCH

Part 7 of a 10 part series on the global reshaping.

The rise of the Medium Countries.

If the last edition was about what happens when a single tweet threatens to ground Canadian aircraft, this one is about something even more fundamental: what happens when the power goes out. Not in the abstract, but in real places, in real projects, at the exact moment the world is trying to electrify everything from haul trucks to hyperscale AI clusters.

Across the map, the stories are piling up. South Africa’s mines spent most of the last decade planning around load‑shedding, a polite term for rolling blackouts that forced operations to shut off entire shafts and plants according to a schedule — until an unexpected improvement in 2025 finally gave them a breather. Chile, the world’s top copper producer, watched a massive blackout halt production and rattle markets. Texas nearly crashed its grid in 2021, and grid planners are still using that storm as a cautionary tale about what happens when demand spikes faster than infrastructure.

Now add a new kind of load: AI data centres and electrified industrial fleets, pulling more power than anyone modelled even five years ago. In Virginia, data centres already consume about a quarter of all electricity in the state, with similar shares in Ireland, and projections that data centres could drive over 500 TWh of global consumption by 2026. The result is a simple but alarming equation: demand is growing faster than our ability to build generation, transmission, and storage.

For medium countries, the question isn’t theoretical. It’s survival.

The New Economy’s Power Hunger

Three sectors are colliding on the grid at once.

• Mining and metals are electrifying mobile fleets and processing plants to cut emissions and operating costs. EY Canada’s latest work frames fleet electrification and grid‑connected mines as a competitive differentiator, but also flags grid capacity and on‑site charging infrastructure as immediate engineering constraints.

• Heavy industry and manufacturing — from smelters to battery plants — are shifting from on‑site combustion to electric furnaces and heat pumps, pushing peak loads higher and making uninterrupted power a condition for investment.

• Digital infrastructure — AI clusters, data centres, 5G networks — is scaling at an unprecedented rate, with AI‑dense racks moving from 40 kW toward 85 kW today and 200–250 kW by 2030.

In some regions, like northern Virginia and parts of Ireland, data centres are already responsible for more than 20 per cent of total electricity consumption, forcing grid operators to turn away new connection requests or enforce moratoriums on new facilities. In parallel, NERC and other reliability bodies are warning that AI‑driven load growth is outpacing the capacity of grids and interconnections to keep up.

This isn’t just an engineering problem. It’s a political one. Whoever controls access to firm power in this environment controls where the next wave of investment goes.

When Blackouts Shut Off Growth

We’ve already seen what happens when grids can’t keep up.

• In South Africa, years of under‑investment and mismanagement at Eskom led to chronic load‑shedding, with Stage 3 and Stage 6 blackouts slicing hours out of each day. Mining operations had to redesign shift schedules, invest in diesel backup, and factor “no power” days into production plans. Only in 2025 did the Minerals Council report that improved availability had delivered more than 250 days without load‑shedding, easing a constraint that had become a national joke and a serious economic brake.

• In Chile, a nationwide blackout that hit Santiago and the mining north halted copper production and forced the government to declare an emergency. The country’s reliance on hydropower made it vulnerable to climate‑driven droughts, turning weather into a supply‑risk factor for one of the world’s most important metals.​

• In North America and Europe, grid planners are sounding the alarm that interconnection queues are measured in years, not months, and that transmission upgrades are lagging both renewables and new loads.

For companies planning multi‑billion‑dollar mines, smelters, AI campuses, or battery plants, this translates directly into risk. A grid that can’t guarantee stable power is a grid that makes projects unfinanceable.

Medium Countries Redesign the Grid Playbook

Medium countries don’t control OPEC. They don’t control global reserve currencies. But they can control how they build their grids. The emerging playbook has a few common threads.

1. Treat firm power as industrial policy, not just utility business
Canada’s federal government has begun to frame grid reliability and affordability as part of its industrial strategy, not just a household issue. Recent announcements include funding for smart‑grid pilots and regulatory innovation in Alberta aimed at improving grid resilience and integrating storage. Similar moves are underway in Australia, parts of Latin America, and across the Nordics, where transmission planning is explicitly tied to mining and industrial clusters.

2. Co‑locate generation with load, especially in resource hubs
Instead of assuming every new mine, data centre or plant will draw from an already‑stressed grid, medium countries are experimenting with behind‑the‑fence and co‑located solutions:

• On‑site solar, wind, and storage sized to cover a large chunk of demand.

• Small modular reactors (SMRs) and microgrids being studied for remote mining camps and northern communities.

• Direct power‑purchase agreements (PPAs) with independent producers that bundle firming services and storage.

The goal is simple: reduce the number of single‑points‑of‑failure between your project and its electrons.

3. Prioritize grid access as a strategic asset
As connection queues lengthen and grid capacity becomes scarce, access to a substation or transmission corridor becomes an asset as real as a mineral claim. We’re already seeing:

• AI companies bidding aggressively for scarce megawatts in data‑centre hubs, then reselling excess capacity.

• Mining and industrial players lobbying for priority access or dedicated lines in regions where they anchor local economies.

Medium‑country governments that understand this are starting to reserve capacity for strategic loads — critical minerals processing, key industries, defence‑related facilities — rather than letting first‑come, first‑served rules decide who gets to plug in.

Keeping the New Economy Running

The “new economy” is often described in abstract terms: AI, EVs, green steel, clean hydrogen. Underneath all of that is a very old requirement: stable, affordable power on demand.

• A copper mine feeding EVs is worthless if blackouts shut its mill for four hours every afternoon.

• A battery plant loses its edge if grid interruptions damage production runs.

• An AI campus that drops offline during training runs because of a local voltage sag can burn millions in lost compute time.

For investors, operators, and policy‑makers in medium countries, grid design is no longer background infrastructure. It’s the frontline of competitiveness. The jurisdictions that can keep the lights on — and control the politics that surround those lights — will host the next generation of mines, mills, data centres, and factories. The ones that can’t will watch projects, capital and talent flow somewhere else.

The flicker at the edge of your monitor or the brief outage at the plant isn’t just an annoyance. It’s a signal. The question is whether we treat it as an early warning or as the new normal.

// THE DIRT

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A Closing Thought

NOTES FROM THE NORTH

Rare day off for the kids today, Monday as well, so we’re going to go checkout some Toronto sights today. We have a pair of home games this weekend and loads of Olympics to watch.

I can tell you that when Latvia nearly went up 2-1 against the USA in Mens hockey yesterday the billet was on the verge of exploding… It was getting tense 😬 

Have a great weekend all! Go Canada, go!

-Lee

Nostalgia - The feeling you get when your youth says hello.