Amid surging demand from data centers (AI, cloud, crypto) and increasing share of EVs.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The quantity of electricity generated in the US by all sources, from natural gas to rooftop solar, rose by 3.1% in 2024 from 2023 to a record of 4,304,039 gigawatt-hours (GWh), according to data from the EIA today.
This is now clearly a breakout in demand, after 14 years of stagnation, from 2007 through 2021, when electricity users, to reduce their costs, invested in more efficient equipment – lights, appliances, electronic equipment, industrial equipment, heating and air-conditioning, etc. – and in better building insulation, shading, etc., to reduce their power costs. This relentless drive for greater efficiency kept demand roughly stable for years despite the growing economy and population. And it mired many power generators and electric utilities in a no-growth business where it was difficult to justify investment.
Now the scenario has changed, largely due to the growth in demand from data centers (AI, cloud, crypto) and the increasing penetration of EVs in the national vehicle fleet – EVs accounted for over 10% of US vehicle sales in 2024.
The share of total electricity generated by source:
Natural gas rules. Power generation from natural gas rose by 3.3% to a record of 1,864,874 GWh in 2024.
The share of natural gas as source for power generation remained roughly unchanged in 2024, matching the record of 42.7% of 2023, about double its share in 2007. Natural gas had surpassed nuclear in 2006 and coal in 2016 (blue in the chart below).
The US is the largest natural gas producer and the largest LNG exporter in the word. Production has oversupplied the US market and has caused the price of natural gas to collapse since 2009.
The modern combined-cycle gas turbine powerplants have a thermal efficiency of around 65%, nearly double that of older coal powerplants. These two – low price of US natural gas and the high efficiency of the combined-cycle plants – made natural gas immensely attractive for power generators.
Coal power generation fell by 3.3% to 652,760 GWh in 2024. Its share dropped to a record low of 14.9% of total power generation, down from 51% in 2001 (black in the chart below).
Coal cannot compete with cheap natural gas and the efficiency of a combined-cycle gas turbine powerplant. More recently, wind power became more cost-efficient than coal. It all boils down to costs. Gas is cheap. With renewables, the “fuel” is free; and all methods of power generation require costly plants, equipment, maintenance.
Power generators have not built any new coal-fired power plants over the past decade. They’re too inefficient and expensive to operate.
And they’ve been retiring their old inefficient and expensive-to-operate coal-fired power plants. In 2025, of the 12.3 Gigawatts (GW) of capacity that power generators plan to retire, 66% are old coal-fired plants, 21% are old natural-gas-fired plants, 13% are old petroleum-fired plants.
Generation from all renewables combined – wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and biomass – rose by 3.1% to a record 1,061,258 GWh, driven by surging generation from wind (+7.7%) and solar (+26.9%).
The share of all renewables combined increased to 24.2% of total power generation (red). More on them separately in a moment.
Nuclear power generation edged up 0.9% to 781,979 GWh, and its share edged down to 17.8% of total generation (green).
The share of petroleum liquids and petroleum coke declined to 0.3%, having nearly vanished as source of power generation. The planned retirements this year will further reduce generation (purple).
Power generation from renewables.
Wind power generation jumped by 7.7% in 2024, to a record 453,454 GWh. Its share grew to 10.3% of total power generation (red in the chart below).
The Big Five states for utility-scale wind-power generation in 2023, according to separate EIA data, in GWh and % share of US wind power generation:
- Texas: 119,836 GWh, 28%
- Iowa: 41,869 GWh, 10%
- Oklahoma: 37,731 GWh, 9%
- Kansas: 27,462 GWh, 6.5%
- Illinois: 22,054 GWh, 5%
Solar power generation – utility scale and rooftop solar – surged 26.9% to 303,167 GWh. Its share ballooned to 6.9% of the total power generated, surpassing hydropower (yellow).
Wind and solar combined had a share of 17.2% of total power production in the US, a higher share than coal, and close to nuclear.
Power generation from small-scale solar – such as rooftop systems on homes, retail stores, parking garages, etc. – jumped 15.3% to 84,630 GWh, for a share of 1.9% of total power generated in 2024.
Hydropower generation dipped 1.1% to 242,226 GWh. Its share declined to 5.5% of total power generation (blue).
Biomass power generation declined 1.0% to 46,740 GWh, and its share eased to 1.1% of total power generated. Biomass includes wood and wood-derived fuels, landfill gas, and other waste biomass (black).
Geothermal remained at a minuscule share of 0.4% of total power generated. Most geothermal plants were built in the 1970s in California (green).
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Energy is like money; the more you have the more you spend. Which is why the whole idea of replacing fossil fuels or existing nuc’s is impossible. We’ll use everything we can get until there is no more.
Tell that to coal.
Coal will return, DJT is MR CLEAN COAL. And after OPEC II cracks down (Putin wants to send DJT aluminum, as QPQ for shutting down Uk, no oil, just aluminum for beer cans. get it?) and EM wants to pump his car company stock, gasoline will be $10 but plenty of coal fired electric for your Musk-mobile. Instead of tax credits you get Tesla credits, get it?
Trump also had a ton of campaign rallies in 2016 with coal miners. Trump Digs Coal was plastered everywhere. And when he won, states like Ohio even passed extra mandatory charges on everyone’s electric bill to keep paying coal plants to idle on standby (at least until the Ohio House Speaker got arrested for bribery, after which it was repealed).
2024?…not so much. The 4 years under Trump 1 in Wolf’s chart were just as bad for coal as any 4 years under Obama or Biden.
It takes more than just a couple weeks to build and get a coal plant online. Domestic Natural gas is also pretty dang cheap these days. I wouldn’t hold your breath for the comeback
Tell that to China.
Exactly, humans are incapable of restraint for the sake of their offspring, so let’s hope something more intelligent takes over the stewardship of our only liveable planet.
phusg, I would disagree. I am very capable of restraint for the sake of my offspring. I save for them every paycheck. I will admit, that I will not restrain myself for your offspring, and I don’t think that there is necessarily the need to in the pessimistic manner that you are communicating.
If everyone just did it for their own offspring that would work for me, I wasn’t asking for a hand out. I just wish I was being pessimistic. Savings are a good idea financially, but we also need to be saving consumption for the future, that’s the restraint I’m talking about.
The data is quite clear that we’re rapidly heading to a point where there isn’t enough financial clout in the entire world to repair the baked in current and future damage to the ecosystems we depend on.
Phusg, just bury your head in the sand like everyone else and have some more kids. Problem gone!
Humans do have a tendency to over consume. But I still don’t like the idea AI overlords.
“humans are incapable of restraint for the sake of their offspring, so let’s hope something more intelligent takes over…”
Billions of people in the global south and other emerging markets would love to have heat and hot water and other first-world comforts we take for granted. Who are you to tell them no?
He didn’t, stop strawmanning.
We don’t have to eliminate fossil fuels. But if we can reduce them by 60 percent, using them primarily when the winds not blowing or the sun’s not shining, it will make a huge difference to carbon release
“using them primarily when the winds not blowing or the sun’s not shining”
What a nonsense comment. Firing up a gas turbine isn’t just like flipping a light switch and the thing just starts running.
It makes sense to augment, not replace baseload power with intermittent renewables.
It’s not nonsense at all. Interconnects forecast electrical loads and weather to calculate solar and wind production, which makes it easy to plan when to turn up the thermal plants. Utility-scale batteries also help buffer sudden demand or supply changes which allow plants to ramp-up easier and keeps those marginal prices down.
“Interconnects forecast electrical loads and weather to calculate solar and wind production, which makes it easy to plan when to turn up the thermal plants.”
LOL if only predicting the weather were that easy.
ShortTLT
NG plants come up very quickly, which is why they’re also used to deal with load spikes. This stuff happens in real time. No need to forecast two days in advance. The grid constantly deals with changing loads from second to second, that’s what the grid is designed to do. If it fails to do it correctly for some reason, you get a blackout in that part of the grid. You’re making up problems that the industry has solved 100 years ago.
Wolf,
These comments are in the context of baseload supply – I interpreted “using them primarily” to imply that. Of course combined cycle turbines come online much more quickly than e.g. coal-fired plants.
If there exists somewhere in the world that uses intermittent sources for their baseload power, I’d be very curious how they do it.
This is incorrect. Firing up of gas turbines is something that indeed can and does take minutes and which is why most “peaker” plants are gas turbine based.
However, these peaker plants are very inefficient. You can combine gas turbines with steam turbines in a thermodynamic cycle which greatly increases the plant’s overall efficiency. However, the steam turbine part of such a combined-cycle setup takes a long time to ramp up generation.
Mitch,
The whole carbon thing and how much the United States contributes on a world scale I think is not a huge factor. The 50 most populated cities in the world are all in India and China. Until those 2 governments who reign over 3 billion+ people decide to clean up their act, anything that we do as far as emissions is not gonna matter either way to Mother Earth. It’s good that you care but it’s really out of our hands as Americans
Yea, and as individuals, we all don’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things. So, screw it!
This kind of selfish attitude is why the human race is eventually doomed
What if..
All of India and China consumed energy per capita like USA and from similar sources. America won’t lead the way and show the better path forward anyways.
We all win the game of slow death.
@BenR and Themsicles,
People in the rapidly developing third world don’t give a crap about North America and the EU “showing them the way” on energy use. They aspire to live as best they can, and more and more, this will be closer to how we live, and they will do this in the most financially efficient way, whatever that may be. Yes, that will mean warmer global temperatures. No, it does not mean the end of life for all of nature and humanity. A one degree increase in global temperatures is about #20 on my list of concerns for my grandchildren. And longer term, global population is going to relentlessly fall. You climate doomsayers can live your little religion as you like but please leave the rest of us be.
“No, it does not mean the end of life for all of nature and humanity” Source? Anyway, I’m sorry for your grandchildren.
@BenR,
Per NASA we are already 1.9 degree F above baseline as of 2024.
Somehow life is continuing.
There isn’t a single credible climate scientist that suggests a 1 degree F increase in global climate would mean the end of all nature and humanity.
If you believe otherwise, it is akin to religion, not science.
As for the other more serious threats to humanity, they range from AI to crazy dictators to inflation and internal civil strife. I will lay a strong wager on any of those things to be more disruptive. I’m not a doomsayer at all, I think we face a more prosperous and happy future. But I’m not a Pollyanna about the possibility of real calamity. 1 degree F isn’t that.
I agree that humankind will probably be alright for a while. But your arbitrary 1 degree F is meaningless, a lot of scientists think temps will rise faster, and we shouldn’t try to skirt juuuust under the threshold that will doom humanity. Ice is melting, ocean temps are effecting sea life and the food chain. Things take time and a lot of credible scientists believe we’re already past the point of no return.
Sure, there’s a lot to worry about, but of everything you mention only one thing is a function of the daily decisions of individual humans. Individuals can’t prevent dictators or AI takeovers or civil war, but we can waste less which adds up.
“Energy is like money; the more you have the more you spend. ”
All humans everywhere want a higher standard of living, which is defined by how much energy one consumes.
…a cold equation…
may we all find a better day.
Thank gawd we’re not wasting that coal anymore. The kids in the future are gonna need all they can get when they find out that untangling the national train wreck will be dependent upon new steam-powered locomotives and lifting cranes. Probably a good time to stock up on overalls and gauntlet gloves too before they quit making them. At least there will be a new use for all that recycled steel after they dismantle the towers of terror built for un-needed office space.
The renewable increases are pleasantly surprising. I’m glad it’s making a dent and hopefully will keep nuclear at bay. Now if someone could figure out how to monetize energy conservation, we could start saving the earth:)
You got people in power now directing that we destroy the Earth and stop any attempts not to, even if they were completely harmless. All out of spite.
A penny saved is a penny earned! Conservation is already monetized. Especially in industrial uses, the cost savings of more efficient machinery is weighed against the increased purchase price, and if it saves them money overall, they’ll buy more efficient stuff.
As the saying goes, the most efficient, least polluting power plant is the one you never have to build due to efficiency gains.
We figured it out! Look into ESCO Structures (Energy Savings Companies).
There are companies that have made a business out of implementing energy savings on behalf of Companies and, frequently Public institutions (governments/municipalities). An energy savings company implements energy savings techniques (high efficiency glass, LED lights, even low flow toilets, etc.) and installs these into buildings and public works. They typically do this at zero to low upfront costs for the user and make a contract to take a percentage of the energy saved/budgeted over the next 20-years as a periodic payment. If you are a high credit quality Corporate or Government municipality this 20-year cash flow stream looks like a bond. The NPV of the cash flow stream is monetized and sold to the capital markets – converting it into an actual bond or loan that is repaid with the energy savings projected, plus a margin for error and a margin for operations/verification of actual savings and a margin for profit . . . all while saving money immediately via conservation. These efficiencies have been a contributor to flat power demand over the last decade or so that Wolf mentions. Another contributor to the recent historical flat demand has been offshoring of industrial production to low cost countries. Now we see a reversal and more on-shoring of industrial production, so after a long time now, power demand is forecast to increase. One upside is that new production facilities have modern efficiencies built into production, so retrofitting is not necessary and there is less energy inefficiencies from the get-go. At the same time, there are always energy efficiencies being developed/improved and there will always be a market for ESCOs. This is a real life example of how they have figured out a way to monetize conservation.
Any energy strategy without Nuclear will not be sufficient. Renewables are a great supplement but not reliable enough, even with batteries. Nuclear has a high up front cost but over the lifetime is more economical. It’s also statistically very safe. Only a few incidents that we are all aware of.
“Nuclear has a high up front cost but over the lifetime is more economical.”
1. HUGE upfront costs, so much so that the private sector cannot build them without government funds and loan guarantees.
2. “…but over the lifetime is more economical,” LOL, only when you exclude the costs that come from operating older plants with pipes that leak radioactive steam (San Onofre) that then has to be shut down; and only when you exclude the decommissioning costs that are spread over years and decades afterwards; and only if you exclude the costs of dealing with the nuclear waste, both the fuel rods and the nuclear reactor, reactor building materials, pipes, etc., when it gets decommissioned. We don’t even know how to permanently deal with this nuclear waste, LOL. We just let the next generation worry about it. The nuclear industry has lied to me my entire life about the true costs of nuclear power. And they have lied to me about the safety of nuclear power. My in-laws live not too far from Fukushima. And there was Chernobyl. There are only a few hundred commercial nuclear reactors in the world, but a stunning percentage of them melted down and caused catastrophic destruction of the land and communities around them.
obviously, when it comes to energy, there are no free lunches. Everything is bad and costly in some way. But nuclear is the worst in terms of costs.
The serious concern is that once wind and solar get above 20% of the grid’s sources, reliability becomes a much greater problem, and one that cannot be ignored. remember, too, that wind and solar require backups for all those times they don’t work, so while wind, itself, may be cheap, its cost to a grid is twice as much because you need a gas plant as well to run when the wind isn’t blowing.
Batteries! Ask Elon Musk about them. They’re making him another fortune.
Why bother with a middle man? Tesla gets their batteries from Panasonic.
You people need to let utilities, power generators, and grid operators do the math. And they’re doing the math, and you see the results. This simplistic stuff is good enough for X though
Look at state like Iowa where the renewable mix is way over 50% with minimal, if any battery storage.
The intermittency of wind and solar clearly doesn’t matter, utilities have this solved.
That’s what people were saying about Europe when the war began – that they have too much green power and there will be blackouts during Dunkelflaute events and Europeans will freeze.
Guess what – Germany remains the most resilient grid on the planet.
The average German suffered only 12 minutes of blackout last year, while for the US that remains above 60+ minutes.
Once you connect together so many countries you’ll end up having so many different power generators that the redundancy offsets most negative effects of green energy.
You are correct on the expensive front, but not on the reliability.
Texas as a separate grid is vulnerable to weather-dependent intermittency, but the US market as a whole is not.
FRANKFURT, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Germany’s cartel office is examining power prices volatility late in 2024, it said on Thursday, as it looks to ensure energy firms did not hold back supply to take advantage of weather conditions that had already sent prices to their highest levels in months.
Bouts of dark and calm weather in early November and mid-December, known in German as “dunkelflaute”, meant wind and solar plants were not producing.
A stagnant or even declining economy- which Germany has – reduces some strain. Seven straight quarters of reduced industrial output takes some pressure off. Hurray?
Germany has had many instances of negative energy costs when the solar/wind produces too much energy and people are essentially paid to use energy. That would be pretty cool to start getting paid to use energy.
Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) says negative wholesale electricity prices occurred for 457 hours in 2024, up from 301 hours in 2023.
ru82,
Think of the arbitrage profits you could make as a battery operator: buy electricity in the wholesale market during the minutes and hours when prices are negative (get paid to take it) and then resell it during peak demand when prices are much higher (get paid gain). Someone is going to figure this out, probably already has… that’s a hot new business in the US right already, even when prices are not negative.
Wolf,
I personally know an energy trader in charge of managing risk for SOE in an small eastern European country in the EU and they sell spot in local market, buy futs in germany. German market seems like its subsidizing the SOE in other countries if you ask me…
Germany remained resilient, but it’s not necessarily thanks to renewables. Points to consider:
It has remained resilient at great cost which is hurting its critically-important manufacturing base badly.
A lot of the resilience is thanks to restarting intensely-polluting lignite coal plants.
It is importing significant amounts of electricity and liquified natural gas from other countries.
Iowa is like 60% wind without reliability issues and no back ups.
Researchers at Iowa State University have determined that they can achieve 90% without back ups and no reliability concerns. They even have theorized plans to get to 100% power without reliability issues while using smart loads. No batteries needed.
The TikTok algorithms will lie to you.
Oh yeah? Well that research will be unfunded soon, so the environmental and economic benefits will never be realized. America!!!
Iowa is interconnected to other suppliers via transmission lines so they can rely on other areas for backup. Great until something goes wrong in those areas or with the lines.
Can achieve in a University study is different than in the real world
No backups? Iowa is part of the Eastern Interconnection, one of the two major power grids in North America. it is not an isolated island. It contributes electricity to the grid, and draws from it when it is needed. That’s why it needs no battery storage; the grid ‘stores’, i.e., uses, the energy, then Iowa gets to use power created out of state in return as it is required. Studies show that as long as the TOTAL grid remains under 30% the grid can remain stable.
Studies show that as long as the TOTAL grid remains under 30% RENEWABLES the grid can remain stable.
It’s only a problem if renewable supply becomes so excessive it pushes prices negative. E.g. if we eventually have too much solar, daytime electric rates could theoretically go negative.
It seems like we’re nowhere near that point yet. Looking at my local consumption graphs (ISO-NE), solar causes a big sag in daytime demand (post-meter) due to all the meters running backward from net metering. But demand is still firmly positive. Solar is nowhere close to messing with prices and the market forces affecting baseload generation yet.
Human race is adapting and and innovating all the time. Oil Gas and Coal are definitely finite resources for the time we are on this earth. Looks like renewables becoming a meaningful reality. I drive through Texas Ok and Kansas and the windmills I think are a marvel . But I’m a build stuff and use stuff human with no interest in conservation of energy for the benefit of the next generation . I’ll let them figure out how they need to adapt. USA and EU can stop driving and use public transportation and then the Asians and Africans that have been walking and riding animals for centuries can start to enjoy the cheap energy. That just sounds so stupid to me.
I love my V8s and big vehicles . Driving my Hemi Ram Truck for 10 hrs at 68 able to pass Semis on the Freeways and carry what I want . Why would I not if I can? Humans are the ultimate consumer.
Question for this group.
Any hypocrisy from Big Tech and previous Chips Act subsidies (Wold wrote about how that subsidy made zero sense and adding to raging inflation ) that is creating explosive needs for new power generation across the global economy?
Why are the Magnificent 5 not protesting and boycotting chip sales growth ?
Of course NVDA and TSLA needs the growth so they can’t participate.
Go Power! Go oil and gas coal wind solar nuclear and anything else that we can generate and use . I hope they all win a race in different parts of the world for our enjoyment .
Not sure why the Mag 5 would be against growth in computing power. That’s where they get their profits. They all seem to be at least trying to power that growth with solar and wind, which doesn’t add to the carbon footprint. More innovation, jobs and profits. Where’s they hypocrisy?
Many rural residents in MD are freaking out as “They (powers that be)” are about to build a new high voltage line through the otherwise beautiful countryside to act as a redundant source for the massive data center campus they are building in southern Frederick county.
I live in town, but find this appalling. They could at least bury it all. And, this is the problem with living in the country: you can have whatever spectacular view, and some ass can come along and ruin it for you, whether it’s this or a guy putting up a trailer across the street so he can keep his “classic” car collection in the front yard…
Waiting to see if electric gets more expensive due to this, although they seem to purposefully obfuscate the electric bills. The data centers ought to be subsidizing our power bills.
It is impossible to bury high voltabe AC transmission lines due to inherent electrical engineering problems.
No, it’s not “impossible,” they’re doing it just fine. There are even submarine power lines. But it’s expensive. It comes down to costs. And they go for the less costly.
It is indeed possible, though it’s not just expensive, but super difficult to repair. If a gentle earthquake damages the power line you have to tear up the streets to locate issues as it’s a nightmare to diagnose where the exact problem is on the line. These high-voltage underground power lines use high-pressure oil filled cables, so if it leaks (and it leaks once every 10 years or so) then the replacement procedure starts. Nowadays there are some oil-free alternatives, but those have their own problems as well.
Generally it’s a technology reserved for ultra-dense urban environments – personally I’m very happy that where I live we have the good old overhead transmission lines. Despite these being susceptible to storm damage, statistics show these are far more reliable than their underground peers.
“If a gentle earthquake damages the power line you have to tear up the streets to locate issues as it’s a nightmare to diagnose where the exact problem is on the line.”
A portion of San Francisco’s power lines are already underground (as they are in many densely populated cities). On the four-lane street here at our corner place, the feeder line and other power cables are underground. But the cross streets still have some power cables above ground.
When they put in a new cable from the feeder to the new condo building down the cross street, they put it underground, along with the transformer. But they left the old above-ground cables in place. There haven’t been big issues with these underground lines due to earthquakes.
A bigger problem are sewer and water pipes that can break during an earthquake. But they mitigate that risk also. For example, in front of our place, there is a big underground valve on the sewer line and on the water line that come down the hill. The valve is powered by an electric motor, from a battery, that is hooked up to the power line. It’s electronically regulated and is supposed to shut off the valve under certain conditions. I know this because when the folks come around to service this thing, and everything is open, I mosey over to them and chat. This is old fascinating mechanical stuff from many decades ago. The electronics are newer. Just a small circuit board inside the above-ground old steel cabinet that is otherwise empty. Looks to me like the brain of that system used to be this cabinet but full of vacuum tubes.
Even buildings are designed to hold up to earthquakes. So putting an electrical cable underground that withstands earthquakes is just part of the deal in earthquake country. PGE should be undergrounding more cables out in the countryside to mitigate fire risks, and I think it’s doing that because it added extra charges to our rates, LOL
Correct. Many distribution lines are underground, including most major cities. Some underground transmission lines, but those are very costly. And, also very hard to diagnose where a break is and make repairs. Two totally different types of animals when comparing underground distribution and transmission lines.
‘Laying an underground cable is six times more expensive than an overhead solution, as it requires more cables and takes longer. The annual maintenance cost of an underground cable is also two to three times higher than that of an overhead high-voltage line.’
Elia Electric
I’ve been studying GEV, VST, TLN and CEG as participants in this surge in energy demand. YMMV. GE builds VERY reliable turbine engines that can be powered from natural gas. SOMEBODY is going to power these new AI data centers. The market will fill the need.
Renewables are the future, the growth in the charts confirm that. We absolutely need fossil fuels during the transition, until a better renewable (fusion) is available.
Technically, fusion is not a renewable. A fuel is still being consumed. Our sun consumes hydrogen atoms, fusing them into helium atoms. Eventually, the hydrogen will run out.
GRAVITY is the only LONG TERM solution OG:
Until our physics and engineering figure out how to harvest gravity as the solution, humans will continue to suffer the costs, both $$$ and health, due to ”fuel” based energy productions.
That’s funny!
Sorry that was a bit rude. The patent office has long since accepting apps for perpetual motion machines and gravity engines as they violate fundamental physics. Gravity is not energy, it can ‘store’ it. Water falls thru a turbine via gravity and ends up downstream. To get up upstream again is usually done by evaporation via solar power. However you can ‘store’ electric energy from any source by using it to pump water uphill, then harvesting it by letting it run back thru the system. The same motor can act as a generator. This is useful because electric use has slack times and peak times. But to ask the water to run uphill by itself, or by reversing gravity is like asking landslides to reverse themselves.
…oh, where are ‘Diet’ Smith and his ‘Magnetic Space Coupe’ when we really need them (for those of less-wrinkled years, ref. back to Chester Gould’s longrunning ‘Dick Tracy’ comic strip, our current DOGE-man a weak character simulacrum…).
may we all find a better day.
Nick, are you familiar with tidal power? Guess what Force powers the tides?
Ben…glad u commented cuz I was going to mention that but thought it was getting a bit long. Of course, the tides are moved by interacting gravitational forces of sun, moon and earth. But since gravity is not energy, where is the power coming from? Before looking it up I thought it would be the moon’s orbit degrading, but wrong. The moon is actually getting further away. The answer is that the earth’s rotation is slowing very slightly. This is a source of power just like a flywheel delivers power as it slows.
I don’t pretend to understand how this power input interacts with gravity of all three.
Another example. A grandfather clock is driven by gravity of falling weights, but an energy source is needed to lift the weights, where it is stored and released slowly.
“driven by gravity of falling weights, but an energy source is needed to lift the weights, where it is stored”
That’s why in physics it’s called gravitational POTENTIAL energy, which is converted to kinetic energy of motion when the object falls.
To return to the topic of the WS piece , sources of energy, gravity can’t be ‘harnessed’ as a SOURCE of energy.
The price of electricity marches ever higher. As someone who has lived lived entirely off solar to power my home for the past 30 years, I was more than happy to upgrade with all the tax credits when interest rates were low. However, I drive Toyota. Reliability, reliability, reliability. I see so many visionaries driving Teslas in Hawaii where the cost of electricity is astronomical and the State utility basically runs off giant fossil fuel generators. Are renewables the future? Maybe. Don’t ask Sunnova customers.
LOTS of solar panels on rooftops in HI.
We all look at the results of this or that generation source yet no one wants to reveal the exact cost of each in terms of its public subsidy levels.
We’d like to see the true costs of all, gas, coal, solar, wind and nuclear at with their subsidies clearly stated. Wouldn’t that provide a much clearer picture of the various costs to end users?
Let the chips fall where they may so to speak.
Nuclear is the most subsidized and costly by far. Nuclear power plants are so costly that the private sector cannot even build one without government funding and loan guarantees. And we don’t even know the final costs of a nuclear power plant because the costs of decommissioning an old nuclear power plant are huge, and it takes many many years, and takes place many decades after the plant was built, and the people that end up paying for it aren’t the ones that benefited from the power. And we still don’t know what to do with the nuclear waste, and there is a lot of it, including the reactor itself. And these costs don’t even include the catastrophic costs of meltdowns, such as in Fukushima and Chernobyl.
Wolf, I can’t speak for all nuclear power plants. But the Paloverde nuclear power plant was paid for by a conglomeration of power companies from CA, AZ, and TX. It generates more power annually than any other power plant in the US. It uses treated sewage water for cooling. It is also the the latest commercial taxpayer in the state of AZ. I’m not sure what southern CA and AZ would look like without it. But I am sure thankful we are blessed enough to have it.
Idon’t – wholeheatedly concurring with Wolf – remember that that ‘treated sewage water’ becomes part of that problematic-to-store radioactive waste (hopefully not close to your domicile), as well as being removed, effectively permanently, from the spacecraft’s freshwater cycle…
may we all find a better day.
CAS- water is evaporated either in the form of steam or from ponds. No water is pumped off site. Nothing to be afraid of.
@91B20 1stCav (AUS) The water isn’t radioactive. It passes through a heat exchanger in a separate loop from the reactor.
Max Power
The steam that leaked out of the steam generator system at the San Onofre powerplant was radioactive.
In order to simply live, every human being needs to consume reduced carbon (energy) and a myriad of vitamins and minerals to allow the enzymes responsible for those catabolic pathways to work and capture the energy of that oxidation and drive our anabolic pathways and actually do stuff. This doesn’t even touch on the energy required to actually manufacture things or innovate, let alone the energy required to keep driving all the elemental cycles then even allow for life as we know it (carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, sulfur cycle, phosphorus cycle, etc. etc.). The carbon cycle is driven mostly by photosynthesis (both oxidative and non oxidative), but 1/3 of the nitrogen cycle (required to grow crops) is actually driven by the Haber Bosch process. A process that requires a non-renewable catalyst and a shit load of energy from burning coal, oil, or natural gas. Shut down this industrial process required for production of fertilizers and 1/3 of the population goes bye-bye. It’s not personal, it’s math and physics. Good news is there is plenty of coal to keep this going.
But I digress, Wolf has been on point tracking these numbers and is correct in that renewable contributions will grow! My useful tip of the day is to buy companies that are bringing these energy generating sources online (like AES, they have a low P/E, a good diviend, and plenty of demand lining up).
AES leads in an interesting industry that has long-term growth potential, but it looks risky in the short term. Huge debt load. Credit rating is BBB-.
What happens if a recession hits, or the recent political wave removes subsidies for renewable energy projects?
The dividend might disappear faster than a job offer from USAID.
I put it on my watch list, but I’m not purchasing any until the risks dissipate a bit. Near term negative risks are potential dividend cut and debt rating downgrade (to junk). I also think data center demand projections might be hyped up and overblown. I’ll wait for that hype to die down.
DM: Now who’s ‘screwed’? EU fury as Trump 25% tariffs hit European stock market and panicking officials warn the bloc will ‘react as firmly as possible’ after Donald said bloc was set up to ‘screw the US’
The US President declared that the bloc was established just to ‘screw’ the United States of America as he announced the massive levy on European cars and other goods
Can’t believe I’m now paying PG&E over 40 cents per kwh. Maybe if they had invested that income more wisely in the past they wouldn’t need to charge so much now.
Ken – yeah, if only they had actually invested that income in power&gas line maintenance in years past at the levels they were then believed to have been performing…
may we all find a better day.
Holy S! 10 cents here on Van Isle BC.
There is some serious roof top solar here…I mean roof covered. I’m not into it at 10 cents (C!) cuz installation, they age, so how long for payback, etc, but at 40 cents KWH. it’s worth a look.
10 cents here in CO. You are being ripped off by green mandates.
Looks like energy parallels economic growth.
Standard of living is defined by how much energy one consumes to control the environment around them.
This varies by person and by culture. Try to tell it to an Amish family.
That’s an extreme outlier, although I’m sure they still heat their homes in the winter – lots of Amish in upstate NY for example.
I’m sure the population of the global south and other emerging markets would burn the same amount of hydrocarbons that we do in America if they were given the chance. They wouldn’t think twice about the environmental impact.
‘Conservationism’ is very much a first-world phenomenon.
It was intended to be an extreme and silly example. Obviously, it’s a spectrum. A significant chunk of the population of first-world countries isn’t interested in consuming more than they need just to make themselves feel successful. Lots of people buy only what they need, run things efficiently, and purchased some things used rather than new even though they can afford new. There are many minimalists out herewho care about the future of the world, their children and their grandchildren, etc.
“A significant chunk of the population of first-world countries isn’t interested in consuming more than they need just to make themselves feel successful.”
And a significant chunk of the world’s population lives in what we’d call poverty, and would love to consume just as much primary energy as we do given the chance.
Who are you to tell poor people in other countries that they can’t aspire to your standard of living?
Also worth pointing out that the Amish burning wood in their fireplaces produces exponentially more pollutants and toxic chemicals compared to what comes out of a gas furnace. Properly combusted methane only produces CO2 and H2O (and heat) as reaction products.
Short,
“Who are you to tell poor people in other countries that they can’t aspire to your standard of living?”
Umm, I didn’t say that? I said that standard of living may be defined by energy consumption to you, but that it varies by person and by culture.
So I’m talking about specifically energy consumption on the societal level. A society’s collective primary energy consumption is roughly (I’ll concede that) correlated with its standard of living.
The more I think about it, your Amish example proves my point: they don’t have a terribly high standard of living, admittedly by choice. But the correlation holds.
Thoughts?
I see where you’re coming from. Energy is needed to provide shelter, warmth, and keep your food from spoiling. At basic levels there’s definitely a correlation between energy use and quality of life. Once those boxes are checked it becomes more disjointed. In capitalistic societies, having 3 vehicles, 2 homes, and a yacht may equate to success. In Amish communities or smaller villages in Africa, living amongst and being connected to family and community may be a better gauge of happiness. We’re conditioned from birth with advertising to think that more stuff = better, to contribute to the GDP, but much of the world isn’t like that, not like this. And guess what, in general people in those countries and communities tend to be happier and have better mental health (societal level).
Serious inroads being made by geothermal generation utilizing horizontal drilling techniques developed by the petro industry. Geothermal provides 24/7/365 output.
Geothermal fracking/earthquake relationship dates back decades. Here in Hawaii’s geothermal plant drills right into the Kilauea rift zone. Many suspect it was the trigger for the Leilani debacle.
Scientific Amercan has some good articles on geothermal earthquake and the dangers.
“At a long-term geothermal project in northern California known as the Geysers, the USGS has been monitoring seismic activity since 1975. Even though the area does not appear to have any large faults running through it, we record about 4,000 quakes above magnitude 1.0 every year. We know they result from steam withdrawal or injection because when operators begin geothermal production in a new area, earthquakes begin and when production ends, the earthquakes stop. Many minor tremors occur, but quakes as large as magnitude 4.5 have been recorded. Residents of nearby Anderson Springs often feel tremors as small as magnitude 2.0 because the town sits only a couple of kilometers above the rock fractures.”
“These two – low price of US natural gas and the high efficiency of the combined-cycle plants – made natural gas immensely attractive for power generators.”
Wolf, there’s a 3rd benefit worth mentioning esp compared to coal: natural gas (C1) is the cleanest burning hydrocarbon known to man. It defintionally produces the lowest amount of CO2 per MW and doesn’t produce any harmful emissions with proper combustion.
Note that natural gas is so clean that we use it to cook in our homes with no ventilation.
Short,
It’s also so clean that I can’t even by a new natural gas vehicle as everyone has stopped making them since like 2010. However, most mass transit buses in the country and all UPS trucks run on natural gas all day. Doesn’t make sense but it seems the government only wants us to burn gasoline/diesel or have an EV. The option to drive CNG shouldn’t have been taken off the table for consumers and handed exclusively to municipal operations or businesses
Companies stopped offering CNG and propane vehicles to consumers because consumers didn’t want to buy them in large enough numbers. Too much hassle filling up (where the heck is the nearest CNG station?). But fleets fill up at the depot, so that makes a lot of sense.
Yup, still plenty of CNG buses operated by the MBTA in Boston. They seem reliable enough.
And plenty of other engines can run off methane or propane. My emergency backup generator is currently hooked up to a propane tank (and eventually will be directly connected to the nat gas line).
The thing is, natural gas is so much cheaper than oil right now, that eventually it will make sense to arbitrage the difference and change the engines. The fact that natural gas is a cleaner-burning fuel makes the switch even easier.
And natural gas being, well, gas has upsides and downsides. Because it has such a low vaporization point, you still have adequite tank pressure even in extreme cold temperatures. With propane, your tank pressure starts dropping around -10 F.
In fact in the south, ‘propane’ isn’t actually propane, but rather LPG: propane (C3) plus a blend of other straight-chain alkanes (C4, butanes, C5, pentanes etc). But up here in the north, this blend wouldn’t work because it would be a liquid near freezing – the more carbons an alkane has, the higher the vaporization point. Our propane is actually mostly propane, which stays a gas till around -40 F.
Excellent article ! I would also add that utilities have managed to move costing around to their customers to take advantage of that stable fuel price in nat gas.
Any bump in price for NatGas will have a major effect on billing as we have seen in the recent past. The US has greenlit export terminals to triple the amount of LNG we export. The days of natgas surplus are over, its a global commodity and we should expect major price increase from utilities moving forward.
“The days of natgas surplus are over”
Absolutely, completely, 100% BS.
Here in USA, the gating function of natgas production is OFFTAKE CAPACITY. This is extremely important to understand.
We can’t produce anymore in e.g. the Permian because there’s nowhere to send it, and environmental regs prohibit flaring. There is literally TOO MUCH GAS. That’s why prices in the Permian were negative for much of last year – producers often had to pay to have the gas taken away!
Another thing we have too much supply of: all this ‘peak cheap oil’ nonsense that comes out in Wolf’s energy articles.
All you people commenting here need to take a long hard look at what is going on in Australia and it’s energy market especially electricity and natural gas.
We’ve had huge increases in the price of electricity and natural gas over the recent past that have put huge pressure on the cost of living, commerce, and manufacturing.
The electricity market is in turmoil as a result of huge increases in solar capacity especially rooftop solar. Wind to a lesser extent.
Victoria has a huge rooftop solar capacity which was installed based on goverment subsidies and the huge increases in electricity prices over the years.
Feed in tariffs started out high and have been gradually reduced over time. These tariffs were supposedly based on various factors such as the cost to generate electricity and the cost of avoided carbon emissions.
From 1 July this year the new proposed feed in tariff for excess electricity generated by rooftop solar is going to be $0.004 cents per kilowatt hour.
That’s right for 25 kilowatt hours of excess generated electricity people are going to get a whole penny.
But if you need to buy that same kilowatt hour of electricity it will cost you anywhere from 20 to 48 cents depending on your supplier and the time of day.
If you have a battery good for you, but for others that can’t afford the $12,000 to $15,000 for the installed cost of a Tesla battery, well I guess they have a choice of being satisfied with selling their electricity for nothing or turning off the exports.