By Steve Goreham
Originally published in Washington Examiner.
People in developed nations take abundant electricity for granted. When asked where electricity comes from, most will point to their wall outlet. But many states in the US are headed for a serious and prolonged shortage of electrical power not seen in decades, driven by rising demand from the artificial intelligence revolution and mandates to adopt green energy.
For 20 years, US electrical power policy has been dominated by efforts to try to “mitigate” global warming, believed to be caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, President Joe Biden called for achieving a 100% carbon-free electric sector by 2035. Twenty-three states have enacted statues or issued executive orders to achieve Net Zero electricity generation by 2050.
Because of Net Zero mandates, US grid operators spent the last two decades replacing coal-fired power plants with natural gas plants, wind turbines, and solar installations. More than 200 coal plants have been closed, reducing electricity output from coal by almost 60% since 2007. From 2000 to 2023, wind and solar output rose from near zero to a combined 14.1% of US production. Over the same period, natural gas rose from 16.2% to 43.1% of power generation.
These efforts to transition from coal to wind and solar have been possible because US demand for electricity was almost flat from 2007 to 2023 at about 4.1 million gigawatt-hours. But grid operators in many states now face an unprecedented ramp in electricity demand.
The forced transition to green energy drives three new sources of power demand. First, 22 states now have zero-emissions vehicle mandates, which intend to ban the sale of cars with internal combustion engines by 2035, or a similar target date. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized regulations that attempt to force about 40% of new light vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric. California and the EPA have also recently enacted regulations to force the heavy trucking industry to transition to electric trucks. To the extent that electric vehicles (EVs) are adopted, this will require the grid to deliver large amounts of additional power.
Second, cities and counties in seven states have banned gas appliances in new housing construction, such as New York City. In a 2022 study, the New England ISO concluded that a shift from gas appliances to electric appliances in New England would require more new electricity than a shift to EVs.
Third, the US federal government proposes to establish a new green hydrogen fuel industry. Seven billion dollars have been earmarked for “regional hydrogen hubs” to try to stimulate hydrogen production. Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water and uses large amounts of electricity. To produce a single kilogram of hydrogen from electrolysis requires 50 to 55 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is about double the daily electricity used by a typical US home. Plans call for billions of kilograms of green hydrogen to be produced.
But the electricity needed for the new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution will be greater than that needed for EVs, electric appliances, and green hydrogen combined. Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and dozens of other firms are building massive new multi-acre data centers. In addition to new facilities, servers in the nation’s 2,700 data centers are being upgraded with new high-performance processing cards, boosting data center power consumption by six to ten times. Today, data centers use about 4% of US electricity, but the AI revolution is expected to boost that demand to more than 20% of US electricity consumption within the next ten years. Cryptocurrency generation, such as Bitcoin, also uses large amounts of electricity.
Rapidly rising power demand from the AI revolution and EVs, home appliances, and the proposed hydrogen fuel industry caught US grid operators unprepared. We are now entering a decade in which electricity demand will exceed what can be supplied by a large margin.
The New York State data center market is expected to grow by over 50% from 2023 to 2030. The demand for electricity in Virginia is projected to more than double by 2035, driven by data center growth. California, Georgia, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest project large increases in electrical power demand. Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, stated: “When you look at the numbers it is staggering … It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”
The coming power shortage will produce two big economic impacts. First, electrical utilities will cease the premature shut down of coal, gas, and nuclear power plants. It will be impossible to construct enough new wind and solar generators to provide electricity to meet the new demand for AI data centers, let alone the needs of electric vehicles, electric home appliances, and hydrogen electrolyzers.
We already see efforts to extend the operating lives of power plants that were scheduled for closure. California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which was scheduled to close in 2025, has been extended to operate until 2030. The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan has been idle since May of 2022, but has now received $1.5 billion from the federal government to restart operations. Coal-fired power plants located in many Midwest states will likely operate for decades to come.
The second economic impact will be rapidly rising electricity prices, driven by a growing disparity between power demand and supply. Higher prices will reduce the demand for heat pumps endorsed by the green energy movement, which will remain more expensive than natural gas and propane furnaces in cold regions. EVs will be more expensive to charge and public EV charging facilities will struggle to be profitable. Gasoline cars will hold cost advantages for decades to come.
The transition to electric heavy trucks will fail. Heavy truck charging requires vast amounts of power. The South El Monte truck charging site in California, the first of its kind, is designed to simultaneously charge up to 32 heavy trucks. But when fully loaded, this facility would use more electricity than consumed by a California city with a population of 200,000 residents, such as San Bernardino or Huntington Beach.
Efforts to establish a green hydrogen fuel industry, using electrolyzers, will produce only a tiny market. High electricity costs will make hydrogen from electrolysis too expensive to power chemicals, steel, and other heavy industries.
And the coming electricity shortage in the US is likely to be prolonged. US utilities have wasted much capital investment over the last few decades building intermittent wind and solar systems that don’t deliver much electricity. At the same time, the fleet of US nuclear power plants has been aging.
Today, 94 operating nuclear plants provide about 19 percent of US power. During the last two decades, ten nuclear plants have been retired, with only four new ones brought on-line. The other 90 plants began operating between 1970 and 1990.
Sixteen of these plants are 50 years or older and another 38 are between 40 and 50 years old. The good news is that the life of these plants can be extended for 60 years or more. But a decade from now, just as grid operators are making progress in closing the gap between power demand and supply, many of these nuclear plants will need to be refurbished or replaced.
The biggest impact will be on efforts to transition to a Net Zero electrical grid. The coming electrical power shortage will cripple these efforts. It will be impossible to serve both the artificial intelligence revolution and pursue a transition to wind and solar systems. The green energy transition will be sacrificed in favor of generating enough electrical power.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.
The general population will be sacrificed in meeting green demands and meeting the needs of favored industries such as data centers and AI systems. Those systems will be extremely useful in keeping tight control over the general population.
In the words of Nancy Regan, just say no.
We already see efforts to extend the operating lives of power plants that were scheduled for closure.
Same in Oz-
NSW to extend life of Eraring power plant for additional four years (msn.com)
The chief idiot has an epiphany facing Greenouts-
‘Madness’: Chris Bowen says Australia needs more gas (msn.com)
Anyone who thinks any serious planning is going on behind the scenes clearly hasn’t been paying attention for the last decade or so. To trust AI believers with anything confirms to me that we are being run by absolute numbskulls but then I was and never will be won over by ‘Gates and company’.
We can do one hell of a lot better with what we have than the rubbish we are doing right now. Can we please have some adults with brains in power and an end to all the mercenary bureaucrats..
I am afraid not. Anyone who thinks this is going to happen should read, as an example, Claire Coutinho’s exchange of letters with Paul Homewood. Coutinho is the current Minister for Energy and Climate Change in the UK. In November she will be succeeded by Ed Miliband, who is even more bull headed on Net Zero, and even more in denial.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/05/01/open-letter-to-claire-coutinho/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/05/02/claire-coutinho-replies/
The people in charge of and driving this are in a state of denial. No matter how much the impossibility of running their countries on wind and solar is pointed out, they will ignore it. The inevitable results will be repeated long lasting blackouts and a crashed economy.
“The people in charge of and driving this are in a state of denial. No matter how much the impossibility of running their countries on wind and solar is pointed out, they will ignore it.”
The same here in the United States. All our grid operators are warning about shortages of electricity. The grid operators said the reason was the retirement of 2.3 percent of their coal-fired powerplants. And, of course, wind and solar are supposed to substitute for the lost coal-fired electricity, and we know how well that works. In other words, windmills and solar have replaced normal, reliable electricity generation, to the point that they are putting the grids at risk of brownouts and blackouts.
Climate alarmists have gone completely nuts. Their plans obviously won’t work, yet they keep forging ahead, running at that cliff as hard as they can.
Dangerous, Destructive, Mass Delusion.
The people in charge of and driving this are in a state of denial.
Are they? Or is the inevitable consequence their goal?
Of course, if it is, they’re in a state of denial about their own standing when it’s all over.
I very much doubt that Coutinho herself wrote that letter but asked the Department to draft a suitable reply. She has only been Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since August 2023 and could not possibly have begun to understand all the ramifications involved.
You are very probably right. But think what that shows, if you are.
There is a minister in charge of UK energy who is prepared to endorse nonsense put out by her department civil servants, one assumes because she doesn’t realize what nonsense it is. A modicum of reflection and questioning would show it for what it is. But she can’t or won’t do that.
But worse yet, her department is putting out this nonsense, presumably because they really believe it. That is even more alarming.
And think about November, too. Then the Energy Minister will be Ed Miliband, a real true believer, who sincerely believes that UK electricity generation can be made Net Zero by 2030. You just build those wind turbines!
All political parties (except Reform) and almost all the UK media are going along with this. This can only end in one place, and that is blackouts.
I agree, the prospect of Miliband becoming Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero is the stuff of nightmares!
California voters ousted Gray Davis for Schwarzenegger because electric blackouts happened during his term — and it turned out they weren’t even his fault! And this happened when most of the state used natural gas for heating.
If the people don’t have enough heat during cold weather, I expect at least equal reactions from the public. And not just in the US but in Europe, too. The people will have our comforts if it takes revolutions.
Pitchforks and torches? Or sheeple?
We screwed up. We’ll need massive amounts of electricity. The solution would be nuclear fusion. But we wasted 40 years of nuclear research and spend trillions on worthless solar and wind energy. It sums up what for kind of politicians we had the past decades. None had a plan for a better future. The problems we face, I’m talking in general, have become too big to solve. Yet they keep living in lalaland and making more debt.
Neither fusion nor hydrogen will be practical for decades, if ever.
Hydrogen – never. It IS NOT AN ENERGY ‘SOURCE’ and never will be.
The energy required to produce Hydrogen will always exceed what can be extracted by burning it as “fuel.”
That is the essence of thermodynamics. Nothing is free.
A lot of the hydrogen question relies on how the hydrogen is generated. Electrolysis isn’t all that efficient. I have no idea what the efficiency of photolysis is.
Red hydrogen, a process developed by the Japanese uses the heat from a gas-cooled nuclear reactor to dissociate hydrogen from water and is supposedly more efficient means of doing so, particularly doing so in large quantities. But again it is still on the wrong side of the energy curve and uses more energy than you get back.
There’s enough oil and gas to last a several hundred years.
I remain hopeful that this will be enough time to get fusion working.
I’d say… we’ll see about fusion. But we won’t. We’ll be long dead.
But “we” voted for them, so …
Simple solution is to contract Chinese firms to build/expand coal power plants in the USA or shift the data centres to China. China was using 4PWh way back in 2010; same as USA now. They doubled that to the current 8.4PWh by last year.
Just make certain they are prepared to accept US denominated debt otherwise the Chinese firms will want a slice of the action and take an equity position like they have done in Australia’s grid.
Gonna need some changes with NRC regulations before China help to build/expand is allowed.
Worked on a nuclear plant generator replacement project and had to live with the NRC regulations.
1 – All materials had to be sourced and manufactured by USA suppliers. Paperwork to show every bolt / plate / wire / welding rod from mine to site storage.
2 – No current steel mills left in the USA to roll the 4 to 6″ thick reactor vessels and pressure separators.
We could contract Russia to come in and build nukes…
“Coal-fired power plants located in many Midwest states will likely operate for decades to come.”
Has anyone looked at the new regulations issued by EPA last week? All targeted to make coal plants more expensive (if not impossible) to run by requiring even more equipment to be added to each unit. And the CO2 from “carbon” capture has to be put somewhere, necessitating pipelines that cost millions of dollars per mile, even if you can get by the local opposition to a pipeline.
I think Biden’s/EPA’s restrictions are only temporary, but if they are not, the coal-fired power plants will switch over to natural gas.
Our local coal-fired power plant was scheduled to switch over to natural gas during the Obama-Biden administration, but the Democrats lost the next election, and the switch never happened.
And we have a new data center moving into the area because of this coal-fired power plant.
Switching from coal to natural gas is not as simple as it sounds. Coal is a radiant fuel, natural gas is a convective fuel. Dramatic changes to the heat absorbing surfaces in the steam generator can be required to provide suitable steam conditions for the turbine.
We will have a compromise. Allow enough grift to make solar and wind farm developers very rich but keep traditional thermal units going.
This will accomplish important goals.
Nothing to help the environment will happen, of course, but that was never the goal.
Growth in the use of electricity is problematic, as it is based on speculation and a certain degree of hyperbole. In Ontario they assumed a certain growth and built accordingly, adding solar and wind, with back-up methane, on top of the on-going nuclear refurbishment, resulting in a period of excess power, which was sold to other jurisdictions at a loss.
During the same period there were programs to reduce energy use, as well as technology changes that reduced use (by example, LED bulbs and no incandescent, more efficient appliances and computer gear, etc.)
We all paid for the costs of connecting the many solar and wind facilities, as well as the nuclear refurbishment, and then a government change hid some of that by having Ontario pick up some of the tab.
Now they are predicting a shortage and seeking to build again. This time they are talking small nuclear. Will we need it? No real way of telling until it is built.
I was invited to speak at our state GOP convention, and the substance of that talk was that the grid can’t be run on wind/solar, adding more than a small fraction of wind/solar has done damage to coal-fired plants especially, opportunities for adequate pumped hydro are imaginary and the amount of battery storage needed is utterly unaffordable. All backed up with data.
The only choices are for government to take over the electrical grid completely and support it with general revenues after substantial tax increases; and/or, invert the usual operation of the grid — I.e. load must always adjust to meet available generation no matter how little generation there is. Either way it spells a societal wreck.
Of course. Government taking over everything is the plan. Why is that such a mystery to people? It’s for your own good. People who want more government control are smarter than people who want private industry to provide services. Just ask them.
Govt control is never the solution. Streamline nuclear power plant approvals, reign in the EPA and let the market rise to the occasion.
Article says:”… electrolysis of water and uses large amounts of electricity.”
I can’t wait until the first green hydrogen plant wants to start draining one of the Great Lakes.
Anyone who has studied the events that lead to fundamental awareness of a risk will tell you it takes a disaster to implement protective changes. The power conversion fantasy will not go away, it will be killed by disastrous events that make the truth irrefutable. I the parlance of safety training, you have to be trained to see potential accidents before they happen. That is the only way to prevent them. Very few are trained to see what it’s like to have no power, no transportation, and no time to prepare. Like the unguarded saw blade, the missing handrail, the open trench, while seemingly benign, it’s only a matter of time and circumstances for bad things to happen. All one has to do is park by an interstate and watch the number of trucks that go to their destinations fueled by diesel, and you will quickly conclude net zero is the equivalent of claiming we can jump to the moon. With no food, no fuel, and no place to go, it’s not a pretty thought. We have friends in Texas who recounted their experience with the failure of their power, it was a sobering and definitely a bit of “training” for what the future might bring. Our leaders are barking mad.
“US grid operators spent the last two decades replacing “
Is this the proper wording? Do the grid operators make such changes
or do they respond to the wind and solar additions and the closing
of thermal and nuclear facilities? Who owns what?
I actually doubt there will be an absolute electricity shortage.
Instead, what will happen is that electricity bills will SOAR because more and more of duck curve spikes (and dips) will be met with “standby” power generation (expensive because it starts with old coal and gas and ends up with diesel generators) and “curtailment” (money for literally unwanted electricity – because this power is generated when nobody wants it).
This is Doctorow-ian enshittification in the electrical utility variant.
Thames water is another example of utility enshittification going on in the UK now.
Story Tip: Charles you had an interesting post on your conversation with an AI app a while back showing you can get “it” to consider the sceptic side of the warming question.
Regarding the topic of the looming electricity shortage, it would be interesting to have AI discuss the most practical way to resolve the shortage, in reasonable time and at acceptable cost. Initially, I was concerned that AI would be a powerful propaganda tool, but it may turn out to be a Trojan Horse on our side, spouting logical stuff to turn the tide on the ideologues.
Interestingly, I just had a longish conversation with Claude.AI, talking about options for scaling grid capacity. Its initial response was full of platitudes and green talking points.
I told it:
Please don’t regurgitate “green” platitudes. I need you to look at the problem with the eyes of an engineer. (In fact, could you please assume the persona of a utility-scale electrical engineer with deep experience in grid management and power sources for the remainder of this conversation?)
It replied:
puts on electrical grid engineer hat You raise some valid points. Let me re-evaluate the situation from the perspective of a utility-scale electrical engineer focused on maintaining grid stability and meeting demand.
From that point on I got intelligent answers. When switching to a different topic I’d ask it to assume the persona of an expert in that topic. (Coal mining expert, coal-fired power plant expert, expert in gas power plant construction, etc.)
It actually gave very intelligent responses when acting in the persona of actual engineers vs a talking-point mouthpiece 🙂
(This is generally the case; you get much higher-quality answers from any of the chatbots if you prompt them to assume the persona of someone who would be knowledgeable in that field. They all basically run on next-word prediction, and a human expert would make much more intelligent choices for their next words than someone just having general knowledge. – Unless of course they’re the type of “expert” trotted out by the MSM to reinforce whatever narrative they’re promoting 🙂
Very nice, thanks, Steve.
So, investing in an accelerated build out of nuclear power plants is in order. Groups of standardized and factory built Small Modular Reactors, (ala NuScale Power, X-Energy, plus a few others) would be much less expensive and easier to maintain. These are smaller systems, more suitable to install on limited footprints. Add in a few GE-Hitachi PRISM reactors to reduce the radioactive waste, and the bulk of the base load electricity demand could be met in less than a decade. Several of these designs can also provide significant process heat for manufacturing purposes. Modern designs fail safe without human intervention or external power.
We are at the precipice of destroying the
worldcivilization and 8 billion people..Correction to the UN Sec.Gen. proclamation.
That last bar graph seems to be missing a column, for plants 10 to 19 years old. Is that because there aren’t any?
The potential monthly electrical consumption of just one of the string of nine electric semi charging stations that Tesla tried to have funded by the federal government is spooky.
At something around “full” utilization of the dozen (8 for Tesla only) charging outlets, two vehicles could be “topped up” if you will with a 50% increase of charge per hour consuming about 900 kwh or the full capacity of one Tesla semi. 900kwh * 12stations * 24hours * 31days = 8,000,000kwh
A “typical” Walmart Supercenter uses about 290,000 kwh per month. Thus this single 12-hole transport truck charging station can use the equivalent of more than 25 of these megastores!
Things got truly frightening when I computed how many (actually how few) tanker loads of Diesel fuel it would require to allow the same theoretical number of freight miles along this 1,800-mile corridor that conveniently connects Tesla plants in CA, TX and (in the works) Mexico. The Biden administration denied the request to instead fund hydrogen fueling stations for commercial vehicles in Texas.
That these stations on the proposed route are separated very close to 200 miles apart when the “advertised” range of a Tesla semi is “about 500 miles” is certainly telling. 400 miles range seems a more reasonable estimate or to at least get the things up to full highway speed instead of the 60mph used for the rating. Thus my suspicion that at some times many or all will be stopping at each station for approximately a half charge.
Should things like these be built in numbers I suspect they’ll either have their own dedicated (very likely Diesel) powered “booster” generator and/or be significantly throttled at times greatly extending charging time. That leads to the need for more charging stations which increases the demand just as surely. It’s rather like attempting to capture and contain the CO2 from coal power station generation–you only exacerbate the problem you are trying to solve..
It’s time to revive nuclear power. Gen IV SMRs could certainly fill the gap and could be built far more quickly and less expensively than traditional nuclear. Some of the Gen IV reactors can even use the ‘depleted’ fuel from the old Gen I and Gen II (and maybe Gen III) reactors for fuel, doing away with the issue of long half-life radioisotopes and having to store them for 25,000+ years.
It used to be New England, where I live, got about 40% of all its electrical power from nuclear plants. It’s a lot less than that now considering quite a few nuclear power plants in New England have shut down. Vermont shut its only nuclear plant – Vermont Yankee – years ago. So did Maine and Massachusetts. My home state, New Hampshire, gets about 60% of its electrical power from nuclear. Connecticut gets a little over 40% of their electrical power from nuclear.
Natural gas fired plants are a non-starter because we have a very limited supply of natural gas due to the opposition to building a new natural gas pipeline between Pennsylvania and New England, said project killed years ago. Hydro is also a non-starter as the same folks who didn’t like natural gas also don’t like transmission lines to bring in clean, green, and inexpensive hydropower in from Quebec. (Three separate powerline projects were killed because the greens didn’t like them.)
What’s ironic is that many of those same people are complaining about how high their electricity bills are these days.