AI’s Power Appetite Is Forcing Asia to Rethink the Infrastructure Behind Innovation

Asian Development Bank President Masato Kanda has called for greater investment in scientific research alongside the infrastructure needed to convert technological advances into wider economic and social gains. His remarks place ADB’s $50 billion Pan-Asia Power Grid Initiative and $20 billion Asia-Pacific Digital Highway within a broader challenge facing the region: expanding electricity and digital capacity while managing resource constraints, unequal access and the risks associated with rapidly advancing artificial intelligence.

Asia's next phase of technological growth is colliding with a more basic constraint: whether the region can build enough energy, digital and scientific capacity to support it. Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Masato Kanda has placed that challenge at the heart of a broader development agenda, arguing that advances in artificial intelligence and frontier science will deliver limited public value unless they are matched by stronger grids, wider connectivity and sustained research investment.

His remarks at the Science and Technology in Society Forum in Kyoto brought together issues that are often treated separately. Electricity demand, renewable-energy deployment, critical minerals, digital infrastructure, scientific discovery and AI governance are increasingly part of the same policy problem.

ADB's response is taking shape through two large infrastructure initiatives:

• $50 billion Pan-Asia Power Grid Initiative and
• $20 billion Asia-Pacific Digital Highway

The AI boom is becoming an energy story

Advanced computing and data centers are contributing to rising electricity demand across Asia and the Pacific, adding pressure to power systems that must also support wider economic growth and electrification. The timing is significant because renewable generation has become far cheaper. ADB says the cost of solar and wind power has declined by 80% to 90% over the past decade, making large-scale clean-energy deployment more feasible. Yet cheaper generation does not solve the problem of moving electricity across long distances or ensuring supply remains dependable when renewable output varies.

Transmission networks, storage systems and access to critical minerals now sit at the center of the region's energy challenge. A power system can add substantial renewable capacity and still struggle if transmission lines cannot carry electricity to major consumption centers or if storage remains insufficient to balance supply and demand.

ADB's $50 billion Pan-Asia Power Grid Initiative is aimed at this infrastructure gap. By financing regional systems and cross-border connections, the initiative seeks to move electricity from areas with abundant resources to locations where demand is concentrated. The underlying logic is regional: the geography of renewable resources does not necessarily align with the geography of economic activity.

Clean energy is becoming a supply-chain challenge

Power infrastructure is only one part of the equation. ADB is also supporting critical-mineral value chains covering exploration, processing, manufacturing, recycling and circularity, reflecting how deeply the energy transition depends on materials as well as generation technology.

This broad approach points to a structural constraint in clean-energy expansion. Falling renewable costs can reduce the expense of producing electricity, but large-scale deployment still depends on the availability of minerals, manufacturing capacity, transmission equipment and storage technologies. Bottlenecks in any part of that chain can slow the wider transition.

Resource competition also adds a strategic dimension. Kanda's speech was delivered against a backdrop of rising energy demand, rapid technological change, geopolitical uncertainty and competition over resources. ADB's emphasis on integrated value chains suggests that energy security is increasingly tied to the resilience of the industrial systems that support electricity generation and digital infrastructure.

Recycling and circularity add another layer to this strategy. Building mineral supply chains around extraction alone would leave countries exposed to recurring resource pressures, while greater reuse and recovery could reduce some of that dependence over time.

Digital connectivity can widen opportunity, but access will decide who gains

ADB's $20 billion Asia-Pacific Digital Highway extends the infrastructure agenda beyond electricity. The initiative is designed to expand AI-ready connectivity and skills, placing digital networks alongside power grids as a foundation for future economic participation.

The development implications are potentially broad. Reliable electricity and digital connectivity can expand access to economic opportunities, especially for remote communities and people with disabilities. Still, infrastructure alone cannot guarantee inclusion. Availability, affordability, accessibility and digital skills will determine whether new networks reach those currently at the margins.

Kanda's message goes beyond building faster or more extensive digital systems. The value of connectivity will depend on whether it becomes usable by a wider share of society. A region can invest heavily in high-capacity networks while still leaving substantial gaps if people cannot afford access or lack the skills needed to benefit from increasingly digital economies.

The same tension applies to AI. ADB is supporting the infrastructure that can enable wider adoption while Kanda is simultaneously warning about the technology's risks. He described rapidly advancing AI as carrying existential dangers and called for strong human control to ensure it serves human well-being.

Science, infrastructure and trust are becoming one policy agenda

Kanda also argued for continued backing of curiosity-driven scientific research, including work with no obvious immediate commercial return. The reasoning is straightforward: major technological advances often originate in fundamental research long before practical applications become visible.

Such research is easily overshadowed when governments and investors prioritize projects with clearer near-term returns. Kanda's intervention pushes in the opposite direction, placing basic science alongside infrastructure as part of the same development chain. Discovery creates possibilities, but energy systems, digital networks and institutions determine whether those possibilities can be deployed at scale.

Public trust is another part of this architecture. Kanda called on scientists and institutions to engage openly with society and demonstrate integrity, recognizing that rapid technological change can generate skepticism as well as opportunity. Scientific capability alone does not guarantee acceptance, particularly when new technologies affect employment, energy use, access to services and broader social systems.

Asia and the Pacific are entering a phase in which innovation increasingly depends on the systems surrounding it: power networks capable of handling growing demand, supply chains resilient enough to support clean energy, digital infrastructure broad enough to reach more people and governance strong enough to keep rapidly advancing technologies under human control.

What comes next will depend on execution. The scale of ADB's proposed infrastructure investment is large, but its impact will rest on where projects are built, how financing is structured, whether cross-border systems can be coordinated and how effectively underserved communities gain access.