The U.S. is facing a massive surge in power demand from data centers and electrification of the economy.
The largest utility companies in the U.S. are warning that the nation is facing a surge of electricity demand unlike anything seen in decades, and failure to rapidly increase power generation could jeopardize the nation's economy.After a more than decade-long period of largely flat growth, electricity demand is poised to skyrocket by 2030 as the artificial intelligence revolution, the expansion of chip manufacturing, and the electrification of the vehicle fleet all coincide as the U.S.
"This is a different urgency coming. They need this load to drive the next iteration of growth," Skantze told the Reuters Global Energy Transition conference in New York City this week."They're showing up now at the utility and they're banging on the door and they're saying I need to put this resource on the grid," the executive said.
NextEra CEO John Ketchum told investors earlier this month that U.S. power demand will increase by 38% over the next two decades, a fourfold increase over the annual rate of growth in the previous 20 years. NextEra expects much of the demand to be met by renewables and battery storage, Ketchum said. The company has a 300-gigawatt pipeline of renewable and storage projects., the second-largest utility in the U.S. by market cap, is also seeing a historic wave of electricity demand.
Supplying the demand with reliable power is a matter of economic and national security, Womack said. Southern expects 80% of the demand through the end of the decade to be, of decarbonization focus as we go forward to make sure we're having the power and the energy and the electricity this economy needs," Womack told the Reuters Global Energy Transition conference. The U.S.
"We're going to need to look at natural gas, and potentially even further technologies, whether that's small modular reactors or hydrogen, if we're going to manage our way through those, the intersection of those three transitions," Blue told the Reuters conference.