Great analysis as always! Good to have a reference point when the word "unprecedented" is such a frequent occurrence these days lol. Even if this growth rate is relatively normal by historical standards, though, I think we're up against a VERY different permitting / RTO environment. With grid operators like PJM taking an average of 5 years to approve new generation, we're filling the grid with a very small bucket (even if there's an ocean of power in the grid backlog that could be brought online - 1 TW plus, though not all backlog projects actually make it online).
Exactly. The US in the 1950s/60s was a nation of builders who embarked on vast projects that revolutionized (for good and for bad) the entire nation. Now, the US is largely a nation dominated by obstructionists, unwilling to risk their political capital to invest in the same sort of generational projects needed to quickly scale up capacity.
The question is, will the US see the error of its ways or double-down on a no-building ethos? While the Biden administration tried to instill a more expansionary mindset (CHIPS and IRA being two prominent examples), I'm afraid Trump's protectionism is impeding long-term planning.
Thank you Hannah. As always, you cut through the clickbate headlines with your thorough analysis.
Alongside historical context, the context of "we should expect to see growth in electricity use as we reduce the use of hydrocarbons" is a particularly important one that we should bear in mind when reading these headlines.
Hi Just wanted to say I have started your book. Very thoughtfully presented and uplifing but frustrating, If we can do it, why aren't we!! thanks for all you do. Rosie
We need to be careful about believing any numbers that come from the Trump administration without checking independent sources. Perhaps from any administration!
Is there a reason you do not mention decommissioning of old plants either coal or nuclear or gas?
from Ai ,
On the generation side, the U.S. will see a near-total fleet replacement by 2050. and By 2050, most of the U.S. grid will need to be replaced or heavily upgraded due to age, with 60–80% of transmission/distribution lines and nearly all transformers requiring renewal.
The other dimension here is the social and regulatory context. Getting anything built in the Anglosphere is now very much more difficult, and a much slower process, than it was in the 1950s. You would need to find a legally compliant, ' socially acceptable', approach to making decisions (including on the inevitable trade offs between development and nature, landscape, and other considerations) at a pace and scale that the system is not used to. Builder/blocker narrative in the UK and US is a crude manifestation of that debate and we see the difficulties of finding no-regrets change in those processes every day.
Very useful! But isn´t part of the increase coming from electricity replacing other energy sources? At least in Norway, where I live, electrical vehicles contribute to the growth of electricity, but gives a corresponding reduction for petrol. We see some of this in industry as well. So how much of this is an increase in energy, and how much is a change to a greener source?
The US added 50 gigawatts last year producing 435 TWH last year assuming full time production, China added 429 gw producing 3741 TWH so if the US wants to keep up they need to add a lot of new generation
I mean, that next-to-last curve DOES look like a pretty unprecedented buildout, something around 100 TWh per year would be roughly normal in a longer historical view (though still on the high side even then!) but really, nothing in the history curve shows a sustained growth of 150 to 250 TWh year over year, for such a long period of time. Admittedly not so unprecedented in percentage terms, but as you just showed it was the absolute additions that showed more stability over history, before the recent lull, than relative additions, so that seems a less relevant metric.
The mantra back in the 2010s was "electrify everything". That was how we were supposed to complete the energy transition to a zero carbon future.
All countries needed to grow their electricity demand at tens of percents per year for three or four decades to eliminate fossil fuels from industrial process heat, space heating and water heating, besides transport and infrastructure uses. Then we'd only be left with the difficult cases.
It didn't happen. Instead, we got thousands of tonnes of kerosene burned to fly politicians to COPs every year, and more of the same old same old. Jetting off to weekend getaways abroad, bigger cars, more fashionwear, more everything. And we got nuclear power plants shut down, and coal power plants re-opened, and per capita electricity consumption *falling* instead of rising.
No one believes in climate change and no one believes in reducing fossil fuel consumption. Our collective actions prove it.
Hannah, I have admired your work for a while and having listened to you eg on podcasts our voices are similar: I'm from Edinburgh. Anyway, one thing I think you often ignore in your numbers and analysis, when comparing the costs of renewables v traditional fossil fuel plant, or upgrading the grid, is that even absent the climate issues, loads of this old capital plant needs to be renewed anyway. It may have been fully deprecated, long since, but a new golden Reform/Conservative future without 'net zero' would still engender vast capital costs. I haven't heard you mention this.
While it is encouraging to see what was accomplished in the last century, over the past decades America lost the know-how, the factories, the supply chains, and the will to build stuff.
I think that hand-wringing (followed by action) IS in order, as the build-out of generation and transmission needed to satisfy a decades-long increase of demand would require a national transformation.
As a political moderate and a member of a bipartisan climate lobby organization (Citizens Climate Lobby), I point out to progressives, that for all his flaws, Trump is bringing to the national stage the muscular attitude that will be needed for America to re-industrialize and create a new generation of clean infrastructure.
Great analysis as always! Good to have a reference point when the word "unprecedented" is such a frequent occurrence these days lol. Even if this growth rate is relatively normal by historical standards, though, I think we're up against a VERY different permitting / RTO environment. With grid operators like PJM taking an average of 5 years to approve new generation, we're filling the grid with a very small bucket (even if there's an ocean of power in the grid backlog that could be brought online - 1 TW plus, though not all backlog projects actually make it online).
Exactly. The US in the 1950s/60s was a nation of builders who embarked on vast projects that revolutionized (for good and for bad) the entire nation. Now, the US is largely a nation dominated by obstructionists, unwilling to risk their political capital to invest in the same sort of generational projects needed to quickly scale up capacity.
The question is, will the US see the error of its ways or double-down on a no-building ethos? While the Biden administration tried to instill a more expansionary mindset (CHIPS and IRA being two prominent examples), I'm afraid Trump's protectionism is impeding long-term planning.
Thank you Hannah. As always, you cut through the clickbate headlines with your thorough analysis.
Alongside historical context, the context of "we should expect to see growth in electricity use as we reduce the use of hydrocarbons" is a particularly important one that we should bear in mind when reading these headlines.
Hi Just wanted to say I have started your book. Very thoughtfully presented and uplifing but frustrating, If we can do it, why aren't we!! thanks for all you do. Rosie
We need to be careful about believing any numbers that come from the Trump administration without checking independent sources. Perhaps from any administration!
Is there a reason you do not mention decommissioning of old plants either coal or nuclear or gas?
from Ai ,
On the generation side, the U.S. will see a near-total fleet replacement by 2050. and By 2050, most of the U.S. grid will need to be replaced or heavily upgraded due to age, with 60–80% of transmission/distribution lines and nearly all transformers requiring renewal.
My AI search says only 30-40% of generation will need replacement by 2050. Seems like it’s a pick the answer you like best situation.
Sory I did my search with a focus on fossil fuels and nuclear I should have made this clear. I used GPT-5
The other dimension here is the social and regulatory context. Getting anything built in the Anglosphere is now very much more difficult, and a much slower process, than it was in the 1950s. You would need to find a legally compliant, ' socially acceptable', approach to making decisions (including on the inevitable trade offs between development and nature, landscape, and other considerations) at a pace and scale that the system is not used to. Builder/blocker narrative in the UK and US is a crude manifestation of that debate and we see the difficulties of finding no-regrets change in those processes every day.
Very useful! But isn´t part of the increase coming from electricity replacing other energy sources? At least in Norway, where I live, electrical vehicles contribute to the growth of electricity, but gives a corresponding reduction for petrol. We see some of this in industry as well. So how much of this is an increase in energy, and how much is a change to a greener source?
The US added 50 gigawatts last year producing 435 TWH last year assuming full time production, China added 429 gw producing 3741 TWH so if the US wants to keep up they need to add a lot of new generation
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Never stop doing what you are doing.
An interesting perspective. https://substack.com/@thetimetravellers/note/p-179315682?r=69wi1d&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I mean, that next-to-last curve DOES look like a pretty unprecedented buildout, something around 100 TWh per year would be roughly normal in a longer historical view (though still on the high side even then!) but really, nothing in the history curve shows a sustained growth of 150 to 250 TWh year over year, for such a long period of time. Admittedly not so unprecedented in percentage terms, but as you just showed it was the absolute additions that showed more stability over history, before the recent lull, than relative additions, so that seems a less relevant metric.
The mantra back in the 2010s was "electrify everything". That was how we were supposed to complete the energy transition to a zero carbon future.
All countries needed to grow their electricity demand at tens of percents per year for three or four decades to eliminate fossil fuels from industrial process heat, space heating and water heating, besides transport and infrastructure uses. Then we'd only be left with the difficult cases.
It didn't happen. Instead, we got thousands of tonnes of kerosene burned to fly politicians to COPs every year, and more of the same old same old. Jetting off to weekend getaways abroad, bigger cars, more fashionwear, more everything. And we got nuclear power plants shut down, and coal power plants re-opened, and per capita electricity consumption *falling* instead of rising.
No one believes in climate change and no one believes in reducing fossil fuel consumption. Our collective actions prove it.
Hannah, I have admired your work for a while and having listened to you eg on podcasts our voices are similar: I'm from Edinburgh. Anyway, one thing I think you often ignore in your numbers and analysis, when comparing the costs of renewables v traditional fossil fuel plant, or upgrading the grid, is that even absent the climate issues, loads of this old capital plant needs to be renewed anyway. It may have been fully deprecated, long since, but a new golden Reform/Conservative future without 'net zero' would still engender vast capital costs. I haven't heard you mention this.
Thanks for the historical perspective, Hannah!
While it is encouraging to see what was accomplished in the last century, over the past decades America lost the know-how, the factories, the supply chains, and the will to build stuff.
I think that hand-wringing (followed by action) IS in order, as the build-out of generation and transmission needed to satisfy a decades-long increase of demand would require a national transformation.
As a political moderate and a member of a bipartisan climate lobby organization (Citizens Climate Lobby), I point out to progressives, that for all his flaws, Trump is bringing to the national stage the muscular attitude that will be needed for America to re-industrialize and create a new generation of clean infrastructure.