The intersection of AI datacenter, hydrocarbon and private credit

Electrical rates are projected to keep going up in my residential area (which coincidentally has seen many datacenters being constructed within a 100 mile radius of where I live), and one of my friends working in the gas turbine manufacturing industry stated they are still seeing months-long backlogs of orders. They said many of their orders are going towards non-utility companies, which I suspect those are datacenters that are operating off-grid and thus dependent on natural gas (e.g. xAI's Mississippi datacenter).

So that got me looking into this.

There's this article from Consumer Report on the growth of the datacenters and their resource usage, dated March 20th: https://www.consumerreports.org/data-centers/ai-data-centers-impact-on-electric-bills-water-and-more-a1040338678/

According to the EIA, in 2024, about 43% of the US electrical generation came from natural gas: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php

An article from Moody's from January 2026 showed that the AI datacenter constructions are increasingly being funded with tranches asset-backed securities (reminds me of the tranches of mortgage-backed securities from the late 2000's…): https://www.moodys.com/web/en/us/creditview/blog/data-centers-managing-risk-amid-a-market-boom.html

As data center capacity ramps up considerably in coming years to meet strong demand for cloud computing, AI and enterprise workloads, the performance of data center securitizations will be at risk if tenant demand for capacity falters. Also, to the extent that landlords increase capital expenditures (capex) to avoid obsolescence as their data centers age, cash flow may eventually narrow for commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and asset-backed securities (ABS). Structured finance has become a major financing tool for data centers, with more than $9 billion of issuance through the end of April 2025 ($4.6 billion from CMBS and $4.7 billion from ABS transactions).

An article from T. Rowe Price from 2024: https://www.troweprice.com/financial-intermediary/au/en/thinking/articles/2024/q3/ai-and-fixed-income-booming-demand-for-data-center-abs-and-cmbs-apac.html

We expect ABS and CMBS to play significant roles in financing capital expenditure on data centers and other forms of technology infrastructure. Both ABS and CMBS are forms of securitized credit, which involve a stream of cash flows from underlying secured collateral. Each deal has a defined structure for how those cash flows are allocated, with the highest-quality slices, or “tranches,” having priority on the cash flows generated by the collateral.

…

The cash flows in a CMBS deal come from payments on the mortgage used to acquire or finance the underlying data center or centers. Data center ABS are backed by property interest in the underlying property, typically held in a “bankruptcy remote” master trust. Both ABS and CMBS structures allow investors to look toward the underlying assets to service their debt rather than relying on the financial health and corporate-level cash flows of the data center operator that sponsors the transaction.

Spglobal's press release on how private credit (also a hot topic) is heavily financing AI datacenter constructions: https://press.spglobal.com/2026-02-17-Private-Credit,-Tech-Issuance-fuelled-by-AI,-and-Increasing-Leverage-Among-Key-Driving-Factors-Impacting-Credit-Market-Liquidity-in-2026-according-to-S-P-Global-Ratings

Tech sector debt issuance reached record highs in 2025, representing about 16.7% of global non-financial corporate bond issuance, up from 11.6% just 12 months prior.

The top five U.S. hyperscalers are projected to spend approximately $600 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, representing a 38% increase over 2025's already stellar 68% growth, driven by continued AI infrastructure buildout.

Private credit lending has exceeded broadly syndicated loan issuance for 'B-' and below-rated borrowers for four consecutive years, with private credit reaching nearly $146 billion in 2025 compared to approximately $85 billion in broadly syndicated lending.

U.S. maturities of 'B-' and below-rated debt will surge to a peak of $215 billion in 2028, up from $56.6 billion in 2026, creating significant refinancing pressure for leveraged borrowers.

Global data center securitization volumes topped $30 billion in 2025, nearly tripling from just over $10 billion in 2024, with demand currently exceeding supply and sharp growth expected to continue.

What I'm trying to determine is if the AI boom can eat the cost of the increased natural gas prices or for the datacenters connected to the grid, find ways to pass the cost onto other consumers (e.g. me)? Can they also continue obtaining money when private credit has been seeing an outflow of investors, or could this stall the AI datacenter boom?

Perhaps the datacenters associated with tech giants such as Google and Meta can absorb the cost of more expensive fuel and debt, but datacenters that don't have a "sugar daddy" could be a different matter.