U.S. Electricity Demand Growth

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency and vowed to unleash abundant energy that would meet surging demand for electricity “to power the next generation of technology.”

A year and a half later, analysts say his administration has yet to deliver results by one of the metrics that matters the most: new gigawatts added to the electricity grid. A single gigawatt can power hundreds of thousands of American homes, and more than nine gigawatts can be needed to power the largest data centers driving artificial intelligence.

Electricity shortages across the United States have utility executives and power grid operators warning that the system is increasingly unstable and vulnerable to blackouts. Those worries were compounded this month when a record heat wave brought the power grid in 13 states and D.C., called PJM Interconnection, to the brink. Major customers were asked to cut their power use, and data centers were given a waiver to fire up their highly polluting backup diesel generators to avoid rolling blackouts.

Days later, PJM revealed that at its annual auction, it had fallen several gigawatts short of securing enough power to meet forecasted need, further destabilizing that grid and underscoring how demand is rising much faster than new generation is coming online — in large part because of data centers.

More renewable power would ease that strain. Yet analysts say the administration’s policies have undercut such projects. As a result, skyrocketing demand from data centers and Americans’ increasingly electrified daily life has added to consumers’ rising electricity bills and angered voters ahead of the midterm elections.

Now, the administration is pouring billions into a strategy to block massive wind and solar projects while funding new fossil fuel and nuclear generation that has yet to make up for this clean power.

Since March, the Interior Department has announced it will spend some $2.7 billion to buy back offshore wind leases, while the Energy Department is offering $17.5 billion in loans for nuclear energy and $800 million to bolster the coal industry. Nuclear power has low emissions but is far more costly and complicated to bring online than wind or solar.

That follows efforts since last year to introduce red tape that has stalled clean energy projects, primarily by holding up their permits, and the abrupt cancellation of tax credits through Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill. Only wind and solar projects that started construction by July 4 or are completed by the end of 2027 will receive the tax benefits.

Although Trump’s energy policies will have a larger effect in the long term, “so far they haven’t meaningfully altered what the grid looks like,” said Ben King, a director with the energy and climate practice at Rhodium Group, a research organization.

And to date, King added, the administration’s policies have done more to subtract more renewables from the grid than add coal, nuclear or gas to it. “They haven’t facilitated much addition at all.”

The White House disputes the analysts’ assessments.

“The United States was on the path to energy subtraction, but under President Trump we are now on the path to energy addition,” said spokeswoman Taylor Rogers.

She said the White House has taken immediate actions to boost electricity on the grid by stopping the closure of some coal and natural gas plants while upgrading others, restarting nuclear plants, and issuing emergency orders to tap backup diesel generators at data centers during peak demand.

“The reality is not all gigawatts are created equal, which is why the Trump administration is focused on unleashing reliable, affordable, and safe energy sources that perform when needed most,” Rogers said in a statement.

Trump has called for the country to “drill, baby, drill,” seeking to boost the fossil fuel industry by stripping away dozens of environmental regulations and opening up formerly protected areas for development.

Solar, wind and batteries are still growing fast — accounting for 90 percent of energy added to the grid in Trump’s second term so far — just not as fast as they were before the administration’s policies.

“It’s kind of a best of times, worst of times moment,” said Jason Grumet, chief executive of the American Clean Power Association, a trade group. “We have the best fundamentals and the worst politics an industry could imagine.”

The renewables projects canceled or becoming inactive because of permitting issues under Trump amounted to roughly 7 gigawatts that would have come online last year, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm. That’s roughly equivalent to seven nuclear reactors. An additional 10 gigawatts planned for 2026 faces a similar fate, the firm projects.

The administration has partially offset that loss. The additional power available from Trump policies — amounting to 4.9 gigawatts — comes from six coal plants the Energy Department ordered to keep operating past their retirement dates. Keeping them online has cost utilities $300 million to $400 million so far, with more than $1 million in costs piling up each day. Those costs are almost certain to be passed on to consumers and further drive affordability concerns, experts said.

Meanwhile, nuclear plants take years to develop, likely only to come online in a decade or more. The recent expansion of Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear plant, building two new reactors, took 15 years.

The administration and the nuclear developer Westinghouse announced in October that they would partner with utilities and others to build 10 large reactors across the country. But not a single project is moving forward yet. And administration officials have acknowledged any new gigawatt-size nuclear reactors are unlikely to come online before the mid-2030s.

Natural gas largely remains on the same course as before Trump took office, as long wait times for ordering gas turbines has slowed construction of new plants.

The longer-term picture only worsens.

According to Wood Mackenzie, more than 29 gigawatts of renewable energy projects originally set for completion by 2029 have been canceled or become inactive since last year because of challenges in obtaining federal approvals. At least 70 gigawatts have been canceled or stalled compared with before this administration, according to the consultancy, taking into account the broad impacts of the subsidy phaseout and other market factors.

Three White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss administration policy freely, rejected that analysis and said it’s wrong to judge projects purely by the number of gigawatts. It’s more important that coal, gas and nuclear can quickly increase their output on command, they argue. Solar or wind electricity output, meanwhile, depends on the weather.

“The administration is wisely prioritizing energy sources like coal that are capable of providing energy whenever it is needed,” said Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of America’s Power, a coal trade organization. “Comparing coal to wind and solar by megawatts is like comparing a full-time employee to a part-time one and calling them equal. A coal plant runs around-the-clock, in any weather, whenever the grid needs it, with backup fuel stored on-site. Solar and wind are intermittent.”

The administration officials also pointed to areas where government actions should be credited with keeping more gigawatts online. The officials said the Energy Department saved a total of 22 gigawatts of coal power from shutting down because many more plants canceled their retirements voluntarily because of the threat they might receive an emergency order to keep running.

The officials highlighted the administration’s lending $26.5 billion to Southern Co. to build 16.7 gigawatts of energy projects, including some natural gas that would come online by the end of 2027, and administration pressure contributing to PJM’s plans to commission an additional 15 gigawatts to help serve data center demand around 2029.

How renewables have fared

The U.S. wind industry has suffered the biggest blow since Trump started his second term. Several research groups and think tanks have drastically cut forecasts for domestic wind generation into the next decade, with growth of offshore wind in particular falling to zero after 2027.

“The policy feels quite incoherent right now. It’s purely ideological around wind in a way that doesn’t actually achieve the administration’s stated goals,” said Oliver Kerr, North America managing director for Aurora Energy Research.

After renewables companies battled in court against Interior’s stop-work orders, five offshore wind farms will be completed by the end of next year. But the administration’s stalling of permits and rollback of tax credits leaves no offshore wind on the horizon after that.

The administration has spent billions to buy back offshore wind leases that probably would have amounted to 17.4 gigawatts of electricity, according to Aurora. Though construction had not begun and would not have been completed during Trump’s term, the move ensures that companies cannot jump-start the projects even if Democrats are elected and reverse these policies.

“To cancel 17 gigawatts of perfectly viable projects at a time when there is a self-proclaimed national energy emergency and challenges around affordability feels contradictory,” Kerr said.

The economics of offshore wind were already difficult before Trump returned to office. Because of supply chain problems and high inflation driven by the pandemic, any projects would need government support to be viable. By slamming the brakes on permits and eliminating tax credits, the administration made the projects economically infeasible, Kerr and other analysts said.

“Most of these projects were not going to happen because the economics have gone upside-down,” said Jigar Shah, an energy entrepreneur who helped manage federal energy investments for the Biden administration. “The Trump administration is paying them back money they were about to lose.”

Onshore wind has slightly better prospects, although projects will still be hit hard starting next year.

The think tank Energy Innovation slashed 85 gigawatts from its forecast for the sector from 2027 to 2030, a 76 percent decline compared with its predictions before Trump’s second term.

As wind development stumbles, solar and battery storage continue to grow at a fast clip. These technologies have weathered Trump’s antagonistic policies the best. They are generally cost-competitive and the quickest to build, and their requests are closer to the front of the line for hooking up to the grid. The market has also seen a bump as project developers rush to take advantage of tax credits before they are phased out, King said.

While renewables accounted for 90 percent of new electricity coming online last year, that is expected to dip to 75 percent going forward, said Grumet, with the American Clean Power Association.

Kerr pointed out that even with subsidies going away, a boom in tech companies’ spending on energy projects to power data centers could fill that gap.

He roughly calculates that Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon’s planned spending on energy is equivalent to what the federal government was going to spend on tax credits.

While that investment won’t all go to renewables, Kerr said, much of it still will.

Free market economics

In the future, King said, the energy mix will continue to be dictated by cost rather than federal policy.

Renewables investors seem unshaken by the administration’s policies. Investment in solar, wind and batteries were at a record last year, while clean energy stocks outperformed the market in 2025.

Long term, Trump’s strategies seem unlikely to be vindicated by a future boom in fossil fuels and nuclear, analysts said.

A future Democratic administration could cancel funding for two coal plants in West Virginia and Alaska — projects the Trump administration is supporting — before they are built. Nuclear, by contrast, has bipartisan support and those programs are more likely to continue, King said.

But even if fossil fuels or nuclear grows more quickly as a result, Kerr said, it still would not make sense to block renewables when the country needs all the types of energy it can get.

“Anything that hinders viable megawatts coming onto the system at a time where demand is rising, power prices are rising, feels like it’s hard to justify in any way,” he said. “I don’t think there is a world in which there’ll be an easy vindication for these policies.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/07/17/trump-has-spent-billions-energy-an-electricity-boom-has-yet-materialize/