ULI and Heitman report says power access is reshaping real estate investment

Reliable access to power, transmission infrastructure and connectivity is increasingly deciding where development can occur and which markets attract capital, according to a report from the Urban Land Institute and Heitman. The report, Investment Strategies in the AI Era: Power Is the New Location, examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping real estate economics, Connect CRE reported on Oct. 16.

Markets with abundant energy, transmission capacity, fiber connectivity and the ability to deliver new power quickly could gain a widening advantage in attracting investment, development, jobs and economic activity, the report says.

"For decades, the first rule of real estate was location, location, location," said Laura Craft, Heitman's global head of portfolio sustainability strategies. "As AI transforms the global economy, power availability is becoming just as important. Access to power, connectivity, and technology-ready infrastructure will increasingly shape where investment flows and where growth occurs."

The report's scope runs past data centers, naming powered land, battery storage, industrial facilities, workforce housing and distributed computing infrastructure as asset types that could benefit from AI-driven growth.

The same study projects $7.6 trillion in global data center investment by 2030, with $3 trillion directly connected to real estate.

For industrial, the report adds a second pricing axis: sites with firm power and fiber may hold value differently from those without.