The answer is important because the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the nation’s top grid monitor, recently warned many areas of the country face a growing risk of blackouts. These power shortages are projected because there’s an alarming mismatch between how fast regulatory pressure is pushing existing power plants offline and how quickly new generating capacity and energy infrastructure is coming online to replace it.
Should the nation face significant power shortfalls, the economic disruption would be massive. Not only would it upend the economy as we know it, but it threatens to derail efforts to reshore manufacturing, ramp up electric vehicles (EVs), and connect the countless data centers that are the foundation of a digital economy.
The U.S. has experienced electricity problems in the past, but they were usually brought under control by implementing policies to increase the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Not this time. To put the situation in perspective, consider that the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is trying to eliminate the coal fleet — about 210 coal plants are generating electricity — at the very time when wind and solar energy are under-performing, natural gas is in a sort of political limbo, no new nuclear plants are being built and some nuclear units are approaching retirement. It is happening at the exact moment power demand is soaring from a variety of new sources including the explosive growth of EVs and data centers.
Let’s be clear: Data centers are now one of the most important features of the nation’s economy. They are a network of computing and storage resources that enable the delivery of large amounts of data vital to the daily functions of companies and millions of people. Each of these mammoth structures — which are the size of football fields and packed with large computers — consume electricity around the clock, day in and day out. In 2013, the centers used enough electricity to power all the households in New York City. By 2020, data centers were using the power output equivalent to 50 power plants. By 2023, data centers were consuming fully four percent of all the nation’s electricity. And now electricity demand for data centers is expected to double again by 2030, with widespread effects on the economy and energy production.
Consider the impact in Virginia, a hotbed of data center activity. Dominion Energy, the state’s largest utility, has connected 75 new data centers since 2019 with electricity demand jumping 7 percent since then. Dominion sees the data center explosion only in its early innings and projects electricity demand in the state to grow by about 85 percent over the next 15 years.
To be sure, electricity demand is also increasing in other sectors of the economy. For example, industries are consuming more power, in part because the Biden administration is luring companies to build factories in the U.S. In fact, companies announced a plan to build or expand more than 155 major factories in the country during the first half of the administration, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. And even with some headwinds for a few automakers, the U.S. added 1.4 million EVs to our roads just last year. Even more are expected to be sold this year.
Quite simply, the nation’s power supply must increase, with electricity coming from more sources, not fewer. We can’t afford to abandon coal plants, certainly not when additions of solar and wind power – and the infrastructure needed to connect it to the grid – aren’t happening at nearly the volume renewable boosters hoped. Permitting delays, inflationary pressures from supply chain snafus and high interstate rates are sinking critical projects. For example, instead of accelerating, high-voltage transmission line additions are actually slowing, falling to a fraction of where they were just a few years ago.
It is not hard to figure out how to close the gap opening between available power supply and projected demand. The regulatory onslaught aimed at the coal fleet must end. These plants are an essential bridge to our energy future and it’s policy malpractice to force them off the grid before we’re ready. Legislation to keep coal plants open has been introduced in a dozen states — and others are likely to follow. However, we need an energy policy rethink at the national level before power shortages and blackouts become unremitting.
