Once again, the consensus of government and private weather forecasters is that this coming summer will witness above-average temperatures in most parts of the United States. Already, warnings have been sounded that America’s power grids will be under great stress—as has been the case for a number of years—with a strong probability of blackouts and brownouts in some parts of the country. For example, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) summer reliability assessment published on May 18 cited the 15-state Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) as the regional grid most likely to see a meltdown this summer.
NERC’s warning proved to be prescient. On May 25, more than 100,000 customers in and around New Orleans lost power for most of the day when electricity demand exceeded supply, despite an emergency order from the Department of Energy several days earlier to keep a 1,560 megawatt coal plant in Michigan on-line that was slated for closure by the end of May. ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, has also warned of possible outages this summer due to potential low solar and wind energy availability during peak demand.
The strains on America’s power grids are easy to explain. After remaining relatively flat for a decade, electricity demand is now projected to jump 50% over the next 10 years. Investments in server farms, artificial intelligence, crypto-mining, and a revival of manufacturing activity account for most of this growth. For example, a recent study by the Berkeley National Laboratory found that data centers consumed 4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 but will account for 12% of power demand by 2028.
At the same time, construction of new base-load power plants—natural gas, nuclear, and coal—has plummeted. Driven by federal, state, and local tax incentives, wind and solar have accounted for the lion’s share of new installed generation in recent years. The problem, of course, is that these power sources are intermittent, which is why New Orleans lost electricity in May and why the Iberian Peninsula suffered a blackout in April.
Although several states—most notably Texas—have adopted programs to encourage new construction of natural gas plants, for the near term it’s critical to keep the nation’s remaining coal plants online.
Since 2010, 300 “always on” coal-fired power plants have been closed, reducing its share of generation from 45% to 16% nationwide. Only about 200 remain on the regional grids today.
The Trump administration has taken several steps to enhance power grid reliability and resiliency by keeping these coal plants on-line, including a series of executive orders signed by the President in early April. One of these orders allows a number of aging coal plants slated for closure to continue producing power.
Not surprisingly, these actions have energized environmentalists who remain committed to shuttering the remaining coal fleet and banning the construction of any new fossil fuel power plants. But the renewables-or-nothing approach they favor is crashing into a new energy reality. Not only is power demand poised to surge but building and connecting wind and solar plants, as well as the infrastructure needed to integrate them into the grid, is proving increasingly costly and challenging. Coupled with higher interest rates and supply chain challenges, local opposition to wind and solar farms, as well as new transmission lines, is having a significant impact on the speed and scale at which new generation is entering service.
The era of tearing down existing, well-operating power plants before reliable replacement capacity is built and connected to the grid is over. The on-demand power plants already in service are more valuable than ever. While coal’s long-term future remains in question, its near-term importance is clear. Our existing fleet of coal plants can help us manage the transition to a more reliable and resilient energy future as we build the next generation of base-load resources.
Bernard L. Weinstein is retired associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University, professor emeritus of applied economics at the University of North Texas, and a fellow of Goodenough College, London.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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USA has plenty of coal and is big enough to absorb the real pollution – i.e. not CO2 – they emit.
Intermittent renewables are not dead – but they are starting to smell that way.
The issue is perverse financial incentives for utilities to close entirely depreciated coal
plants in favor of new wind and solar.
It’s not just financial incentives. Some states (like New York, Virginia et.al.) have laws that require CO2 emissions to reduce to zero by 2045 or 2050 or even earlier.
Ignorance may be bliss-but can be treated and folks educated. Stupid is forever. NY, Virginia, Cali will learn the hard way soonest, but everybody is going to get it in the neck sooner or later unless the nutzero and greenie whacks are stopped. I live in the MISO, am old and cranky about things that should be addressed right now, but everybody seems to think the issues will fix themselves. Well, I guess I should go get that generator I’ve been thinking about…
Cali was supposed to ban small engine generators in 2024. That ban has been stepped out to 2027. I assume because they realized it was just impossible to eliminate a necessary tool without a viable replacement. I ran out and purchased another generator just before the ban was stepped out. I wonder what 2027 will bring. The replacement for a generator? A big battery pack? Laughable.
Oh, please don’t leave California out of the list of idiots.
Sure, I got tired of thinking about all of them.
Embedded in that is the perverse incentive to meet green targets instead of providing a reliable affordable service. The utilities I worked for 40 years ago kept fully depreciated very old coal plants operating so as to be sure they had the capacity to provide power at peak times, because that was their mandate.
The IEA say that whilst no new orders for coal plants were made by advanced economies in 2024 China approved almost 100GW of new coal fired capacity. India a more modest 15GW.
IEA ‘World Energy Investment 2025’ (June 2025)
I cannot imagine a set of criteria under which China would not be considered to have an advanced economy.
The IEA criteria is a bit old fashioned!
It’s always the tax code that screws up otherwise rational decision-making.
I believe the tax code was written with malice aforethought.
The issue is the state mandates to Net zero by 2050, i.e., reduce CO2 by having dysfunctional, expensive wind and solar instead, even in places where wind and solar do not make $ense, such as in foggy/rainy Washington State, rainy/foggy/snowy New England, and in the windless South.
We need a Pro-life, Pro-CO2 Coalition
The IPCC, etc., has dubbed CO2 as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC, etc., claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
The IPCC, etc., denies the Little Ice Age, uses fraudulent computer temperature projections.
.
Governments proclaimed: Go Wind and Solar, Go ENERGIEWENDE, go Net zero by 2050, etc., and provided oodles of subsidies, and rules and regulations, and mandates, and prohibitions to make it happen.
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Burn, baby, burn, may lead to a slightly greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere, which is an absolutely essential ingredient for creating: 1) increased green flora to support abundant fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to feed 8 billion people. What is not to like?
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to 1) increase command/control by governments, and 2) enable the moneyed elites to become more powerful and richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people, already for at least 40 years.
CO2 is a life gas.
CO2 ppm increase from 1979 to 2023 was 421/336 = 1.25, greening increase about 12%, per NASA.
CO2 ppm increase from 1900 to 2023 was 421/296 = 1.42, greening increase about 19%
.
Increased greening: 1) Produces oxygen by photosynthesis; 2) Increases world flora and fauna; 3) Increases crop yields per acre; 4) Reduces world desert areas
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Respiration: glucose + O2 → CO2 + H20 (+ energy)
Photosynthesis: 6 CO2 + 12 H2O (+ sunlight + chlorophyll) → 1 glucose + 6 O2 + 6 H20
Plants respire 24/7. Plants photosynthesize with brighter light
In low light, respiration and photosynthesis are in balance
In bright light, photosynthesis is much greater than respiration.
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Oceans Absorb CO2
Sea water has 3.5% salt, NaCl, by weight.
CO2 molecules continuously move from the air into sea water, per Henry’s Law
CO2 and NaCl form many compounds that contain C, O, H, Cl, Ca
They sustain flora and fauna in the oceans, such as plankton, kelp, coral, seagrass, shell fishes, etc. See
The era of tearing down…
Coal is the new “bridge fuel” – to a brighter, more prosperous future.
All hail King Coal…again and ever, retarded pseudo eco BS will deprive him of his throne NEVER !
You can try to substitute with natural gas as much as you want, gas turbines lack sufficient inertia and are expensive to operate.
The question, one day soon, will be HOW to replace the CO2 in the atmosphere. Biology removes about 50 ppm 0f CO2 annually. Respiration and decomposition are enough to keep CO2 up to ~300 ppm during an interglacial in which we happily live now- that is – a WARM period. Presently, ~420 ppm of CO2, that ‘pollutant’ despised by the sadly indoctrinated, feeds our primary producers in a very robust greening of the planet, on land and sea. The greening feeds billions via high energy intensivity for industrial scale farming, fertilizers, pesticides, and cultivars, all due to hydrocarbons. The combustion of hydrocarbons has produced the 120 ppm difference. Thanks to Asia, CO2 still rises at ~2 ppm per year, and food production is keeping pace with population. Three of every four persons on the planet owes his or her life to hydrocarbons. Western countries, being run by an undereducated, moronic elite exemplified by the ruling party in CA, have been going in the opposite, wrong direction as fast as our money permitted. Now, grid collapses and battery fires are sapping the elite’s media control of the masses, and we have X, and a few still free means of communication Momentum is shifting from the elite’s preferred narrative to the question with which I began – how to keep the CO2 high enough to maintain our better world.
whsmith writes
Latest y/y (annual average) changes are +2.73 and +3.73 ppm / year.
[ For ’22 -> ’23 and for ’23 -> ’24, respectively. ]
Aside: those are beautiful numbers, for anyone versed in absolute thermometry.
Sadly, the past few months have seen a decline (!), in the seasonally corrected levels.
Clearly, these ppm-CO2 changes can explain the wild swings in recent global-average temperatures … because everyone knows that an effect must precede its cause … isn’t that right?
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/global.html
California isn’t a country yet, although some of our Government weenies act as if it is. Please let my wife and I escape before California secedes. Governor Newsom is taking the first steps toward that, but any sane person would realize what a disaster that would be for the “fourth largest economy in the World”.
Subtract the hundreds of thousands of government civilian workers, the even greater number of military personnel deployed, the ports serving the US, and military installations and federal research funds. Then subtract the multiplier effect of all those federal dollars flowing into the state. California would quickly drop in the size of their economy and be headed to third-world status. They refuse to develop their natural resources, don’t manufacture much (too costly), have driven out much of the movie industry, and their tourism and business conventions have been on the decline, as well. The one bright spot they have is agriculture, but they are losing land to solar farms and restrictive irrigation policies. Electrifying agricultural equipment is also in the plans. They seem determined to create failure.
I would love to see the effects of a Cali secession on their economy.
There are currently two coal-fired plants which are still operational (but hardly being used) in New Hampshire, and are the last two remaining in New England. One of them, Shiller Station in Portsmouth hasn’t been used since 2020, and is slated to close this year. The other, Merrimack Station in Bow is being used as a Peaker Plant (only fired up in emergencies), and is slated to close by 2028. These two plants, instead of being barely used and slated to close need to be revived, and fully operational. It would be a huge travesty and folly to lose them, due to a false ideology.
It’s a theology now.
How long does it take to fire up a coal plant – 2 – 3 days?
Obviously many developing nations have taken a more realistic approach toward existing and future energy demands; e.g., nine Asian nations, led by China and India, account for 96%of global coal plant development. India plans to add 90 GW of coal-fired capacity to its grid by 2032, and it already gets 70% of its electricity from coal. Global Coal Plant Tracker 2025 reports that world coal capacity rose to 2175 GW, up 259 GW since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was signed, a 13% increase. This is another reminder that few entities are paying much attention to these emissions-reduction deals, especially when many of the retired coal plants that the climate activists boast about are being replaced by gas-fired types, not wind or solar. In fact, gas-fired energy production worldwide has more than doubled since 2022. So when it comes to climate deals, treaties and promises, the vast majority of countries are just paying them lip-service while proceeding with what is realistic and reliable.
Not since 2022, but since 2000
Meanwhile because of that rising demand for coal in south east Asia the Australian government is allowing 46 projects for coal mining for export to go ahead whilst also closing down coal stations at home because of ‘climate change’
Those 46 projects are almost 50% of all coal mining for export projects underway in the world. The next highest number of projects are 9 each in Canada and South Africa.
IEA ‘Coal 2024 Analysis and Forecast to 2027’ (Dec. 2024)
The fact that anyone considers the PRC or India as developing nations is ludicrous.
There is a simple solution although it may not be easy. NERC knows which areas of the country are insisting fossil fuel and nuclear go away and wind and solar become our source of electricity. The renewables areas should be isolated to the greatest extent possible and when they bring brown outs or black outs on themselves power traffic should be manipulated to make only them suffer and all available power reserved for those of us who know we need fossil fuel and nuclear whether we like it or not. There is no reason for the rest of us to be penalized for their ignorance.
Island grids do that as Spain found out, and it wasn’t an island but a peninsula. Even then a smallish region with large solar generation during the midday siesta low demand dropped the synchronous generation and that spread through the whole country
Yep: the era is indeed over in the UK – relevant plants have all been dynamited, none are left.
“Bridge” fuel? Bridge to what? Coal is mainstream and mainstay for eons to come.
There is no “more reliable and resilient energy future” than using coal. No transition to any BS needed.
Once again we are witnessing an attempt of green parasitic climate-industrial complex to justify its existence and desire to suck perennially on real value producing economy.