The race to build data center capacity has entered a phase in which the scale of ambition increasingly exceeds the readiness of the infrastructure supporting it. Across North America, operators are planning facilities around unprecedented electricity requirements, driven by artificial intelligence, cloud services, and the continuing expansion of digital storage. The challenge is no longer simply how quickly a building can be completed, but whether its power infrastructure can sustain demanding workloads through changing operating conditions, increasingly severe weather, and tightening environmental expectations. That question matters because the electrical systems selected during design will influence operating costs, maintenance requirements, carbon emissions, and service continuity long after construction teams leave. Yet an outdated assumption continues to shape some infrastructure decisions: that dependable power requires compromises that make sustainability more difficult to achieve.