July 20, 2024 - Not a week goes by without another jaw-dropping projection on the speed and scale of power demand growth.

PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest grid operator serving 65 million Americans, has warned again and again that it is facing rapidly approaching capacity shortfalls. The collision of soaring power demand driven by electrification, new industrial activity and the explosive growth of datacenters coupled with rapid coal plant closures has PJM’s leadership – and its independent market monitor – deeply concerned.

Multiple times this year, PJM and its market monitor have revised the market’s power demand projections and the losses the grid is expected to face from power plant closures. Now add a startling new projection to the list. According to a new report, PJM may need to double its generating capacity by 2040 if demand growth surges as some modelling now predicts. It’s an extraordinary challenge now made all but impossible because of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory agenda.

The gulf between what PJM needs to meet power demand, preserve grid reliability and not handcuff economic growth with power shortages is growing startlingly wider. But while PJM has been outspoken about the challenges it’s facing, they’re far from unique. Explosive demand growth is happening everywhere.

A Tsunami of Demand Coming in Texas

The Permian basin of Texas – the heart of the state’s oil and gas industry – is also seeing extraordinary electricity demand growth. It’s the last place you would expect an electric revolution but that’s exactly what’s happening. Electrification of drilling operations and rapid additions of data centers and crypto mining are sending power demand through the roof.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s main grid operator, estimates electricity demand from industries in the Permian region will more than double by 2030. Astonishingly, power demand is expected to jump to 24 GW at peak periods—more power than the entire state of Tennessee generates during similar periods.

Grid operators charged with keeping the lights on simply don’t know how they can manage the tsunami of demand now on their doorstep while trying to comply with EPA’s power plant agenda that wipes out the coal fleet by 2032 and makes it all but impossible to build new baseload coal and natural gas capacity.

SPP Warns There’s Nothing Hypothetical About the Challenge

Look north and you find the same story. The Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which covers territory in 14 central states, has issued an even more forceful warning about the impact of the so-called Clean Power Plan 2.0. The operator wrote:

“SPP remains concerned, however, about the impact the Final Rule may have on the region’s ability to maintain resource adequacy and ensure reliability in the SPP region. SPP is concerned that limited technological and infrastructure availability and the compliance time frame will have deleterious impacts including the retirement of, or the decision not to build, thousands of MWs of baseload thermal generation. If sufficient flexible thermal resources are not available to play their critical roles in SPP’s resource mix, SPP’s ability to maintain regional reliability will be directly impacted.”

The operator notably added, “SPP is not expressing these concerns about a hypothetical resource adequacy scenario in the future. SPP and other grid operators are currently working to develop planning and operations policies and practices to deal with resource adequacy issues that have already manifested.”

SPP emphasized that the 90% carbon capture mandate in the EPA rule is unworkable and doesn’t pass the test, as legally required, of meeting the standards of a best system of emissions reduction. The result will be rapid losses of essential capacity that will greatly exacerbate already existing reliability challenges just as the operator is forced to grapple with surging power demand.

EPA is forcing a suite of power plant rules on the nation’s grid that will short-circuit our power supply. EPA’s agenda was untethered from the on-the-ground reality of rapidly deteriorating grid reliability when it was launched two years ago. With the explosion of new power demand, it’s a plan created in another nearly unrecognizable world. These are real challenges and current problems that demand comprehensive solutions; EPA’s unwillingness to face this new reality shows just how gravely the agency has overstepped its authority in its hostile takeover of our nation’s energy policy.