Our country is facing an energy crisis. No, not because of new demand from data centers or AI. [emphasis, links added]
Instead, it’s because utilities in nearly every state, due to government-imposed “renewable” mandates, self-imposed mandates, and the supercharging of the Green New Scam under the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” have been shutting down vital coal resources and building out almost exclusively intermittent and costly resources like solar, wind, and battery storage.
President Donald Trump understands this, and that is why on day one of his administration, he declared an Energy Emergency.
Then, a few months later, the President signed a trio of Executive Orders designed to keep our “beautiful, clean coal” burning and providing the reliable, baseload, and affordable electricity Americans have benefited from for generations.
Those orders have been used to keep coal generation online that was slated to shut down in Michigan and will potentially keep two units operating that were scheduled to shut down in Colorado this December.
In Arizona, however, the Cholla Power Plant in Navajo County was shuttered by the utility just weeks after Trump explicitly called out the plant for saving in a press conference.
Unlike states with green mandates, Arizona essentially has none. Instead, our utilities, like many around the country, have self-imposed commitments to go “Net Zero” by 2050.
To meet that target, they have planned to shut down all coal generation in the state by 2032 and plan to build out almost exclusively solar, wind, and battery storage to meet an expected explosive growth in demand, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.
So it is no surprise that, like much of the rest of the country, Arizona is facing an energy crisis.
Taking a look at our largest regulated utilities (APS, TEP, and UNS) and the largest nonprofit utility, SRP, future plans paint an alarming picture.
Combined, over the next 15 years, these utilities expect to see demand increase from 19,200 MW to 28,000 MW. For reference, 1,000 MW of electricity is enough to power roughly 250,000 homes.
To meet that growth in demand, however, Arizonans will only get a net increase of 989 MW of reliable generation (coal, natural gas, and nuclear) compared to 22,543 MW (or nearly 23 times as much) of intermittent solar, wind, and battery storage.
But what about all of the new natural gas coming into the state? The vast majority of it will be eaten up just to replace existing coal resources, not to bring additional affordable energy to the grid.
For example, the SRP board recently voted to approve the conversion of its Springerville coal plant to natural gas by 2030, which follows an earlier vote to convert another of its coal plants, Coronado, to natural gas by 2029.
This coal conversion trap leaves ratepayers with the same amount of energy as before, eating up new natural gas capacity without the benefit of more electricity.
So, while the Arizona utilities plan to collectively build an additional 4,538 MW of natural gas capacity over the next 15 years, at the same time they will be removing -3,549 MW (all of what is left on the grid today) of coal.
And there are no plans for more nuclear capacity anytime soon. Instead, to meet their voluntary climate commitments, utilities plan to saddle ratepayers with the cost and resultant blackouts of the green new scam.
It’s no surprise then that Arizona’s largest regulated utilities, APS and TEP, are seeking double-digit rate hikes next year. It’s not just Arizona. Excel customers in Colorado (with a 100% clean energy commitment) and in Minnesota (also with a 100% clean energy commitment) are facing nearly double-digit rate hikes.
The day before Thanksgiving, PPL customers in Rhode Island (with a state mandate of 100% renewable by 2033) found out they may see rate hikes next year. Dominion (which has a Net Zero by 2050 commitment) wanted to raise rates for customers in Virginia by 15%. Just last month, regulators approved a 9% increase.
Importantly, these rate increases are to recover costs for expenses incurred years ago, meaning they are clearly to cover the costs of the energy “transition” supercharged under the Biden administration, not from increased demand from data centers and AI.
It’s the same story around the country. Electricity rates are rising. Reliability is crumbling. We know the cause. For generations, we’ve been able to provide reliable energy at an affordable cost.
The only variable that has changed has been what we are choosing to build. Then, it was reliable, dispatchable power. Now, it is intermittent sources that we know cost more and cause blackouts, all to meet absurd goals of going 100% renewable – something that no utility, state, or country has been able to achieve.
And we know the result when they try.
This crisis can be avoided. Trump has laid out the plan to unleash American Energy. Now, it’s time for utilities to drop their costly green new scam commitments and go back to building reliable and affordable power that generations to come will benefit from.
Top photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash
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“Our country is facing an energy crisis. No, not because of new demand from data centers or AI.”
FALSE.
Data centers are projected to account for a significant portion of the increase in US electricity demand over the next five years, with estimates generally falling in the range of 30% to over 40% of all net-new electricity demand through 2030.
Data Center Energy Usage:
The Costs to Arizona for AI’s rapid growth, particularly through data centers, is causing a massive surge in Arizona’s electricity demand, projected to significantly strain grids and potentially doubling data center energy use by 2030. Data centers are a huge driver of Arizona’s projected electricity demand surge, with reports suggesting they could consume up to 16.5% of the state’s total power by 2030, contributing significantly to overall demand growth that could exceed 40% by 2031, primarily due to AI
Of the 10 U.S. states with the highest percentage of electricity from solar and wind, 9 have average or below average electricity prices and 6 have Republican governors.
US wind and solar farm construction and EV sales all set new records in 2025 under Trump.
The US was only one Democrat Administration away from disastrous power failures because the country is in the jaws of the wind drought trap. It is up to the Trump Administration to get them out, and to show the way for all the other western nations where suicidal net zero policies are in place.
The wind drought trap is set over many years as subsidies and mandates for unreliable solar and wind energy displaced conventional power without being able to replace it. There is a ‘frog in the saucepan’ effect because coal power retires one plant at a time and this does not cause alarm while there is spare capacity.
Eventually the spare capacity runs out and the trap is set to close when there is not enough to meet the base load overnight. Then windless nights are potentially lethal because there is no wind or solar generation, regardless of the amount of installed capacity.
The incompetence or negligence of the official meteorologists around the world allowed this situation to develop because they didn’t issue wind drought warnings even though they know that high pressure systems cause low winds.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/defusing-the-wind-drought-trap-revised
The February 2021 Texas wind drought lasted one week.
It is the longest known US wind drought that covered an area the size of a state. The lack of wind did not ’cause the February 2021 Texas blackout, as you claim in your article. February 2011 and February 2021 Texas blackouts were caused by the same thing: A temporary shortage of Just in Time gas supplies due to extremely cold weather. In February 2021, Texas faced a massive power shortage during Winter Storm Uri, with over 52,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity offline at its peak, forcing the grid operator (ERCOT) to implement 20,000 MW of rolling blackouts to prevent total collapse.
During the February 2021 Texas blackout, wind power generation dropped drastically, with reports showing wind turbines producing as little as <1 GW (gigawatt) out of a potential 25 GW capacity at times. In February 2024, wind energy generated 11,890 GWh, the highest total for that month on record. During the 2021 Texas blackout (Winter Storm Uri), a massive amount of gas power capacity went offline, with estimates varying but pointing to tens of thousands of megawatts (MW); reports from ERCOT indicated around 30,000 MW from gas/coal combined, offline at one point, with gas production also falling by nearly 50%, crippling fuel supply to generators.
There has never been enough wind power in the month of February in Texas, to cover the loss of gas power in Texas in February 2021. It’s a long standing conservative myth that the lack of wind power caused the 2021 Texas blackout. Conservatives will immediately blame renewables for grid problems and failures. A reflex not based on analysis.
Texas natural gas production fell by nearly 45–50% at its lowest point on February 17, 2021, largely due to “freeze-offs” at wellheads and equipment failures. That’s why there was a blackout.
During the February 2021 Texas power crisis (Winter Storm Uri), gas-powered electricity generation underperformed by approximately 37% compared to its expected winter capacity. Total Outage Share: Natural gas-fired units accounted for 58% of all unplanned power outages, derates, or failures to start during the event. Coal-fired power plants operated at approximately 60% of their rated capacity on February 15, 2021, representing a shortfall of roughly 6 GW. Nuclear power generation in Texas declined by approximately 1.3 gigawatts (GW), or roughly 20–21% of its expected capacity, during the 2021 winter blackout.