Image Credit: PJM Interconnection
The Center Square [By Jon Styf] –
While demand for electricity is set to significantly increase by 2040, planning is not in place to increase electricity production to meet those estimates, according to a new report from Clean Energy Grid related to PJM Interconnection.
PJM coordinates wholesale energy movement for 65 million people through parts or all of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
“A key barrier to transmission development is a lack of proactive transmission planning,” the report said. “Opponents and skeptics of proactive planning often raise the specter of uncertainty and speculation as a roadblock to achieving robust and reliable results. But these concerns will not be resolved by ignoring the massive changes impacting the energy industry and continuing to plan reactively.”
The report points to additional clean energy requirements, aging thermal energy generation and the increase of electrical need due to the increase of electric vehicles, manufacturing facility needs and data centers.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has led interstate efforts to push back against policies from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that could lead to as many as two-thirds of all vehicles in the United States to be electric vehicles by 2032.
“The Biden administration’s woke agenda is also placing more strain and demand on our nation’s electrical energy grids at the same time that it has taken dramatic measures to weaken them,” Morrisey said while fighting the EPA requirements. “Its continued war on coal ensures that the grid won’t have the baseload capacity to take on even more demand from electric vehicles, particularly in the off-hours that people charge these cars. Yet agencies like the EPA continue to ignore the production and distribution challenges that lie ahead if proposals like this are adopted.”
The report says PJM’s 2040 energy demands will increase by 8% to 18% above the 2024 load forecast and PJM will need an additional 623 to 798 terawatt hours of annual electricity by 2040 to meet the resource gap.
That means anywhere from a 76% to 100% increase in annual energy production “driven by higher electrification estimates leading to larger load growth and higher amounts of generation retirements due to shorter plant lifespan assumptions.”
About the Author: Jon Styf, The Center Square Staff Reporter – Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonStyf.
3 Responses
Electric heat is…well, I’ll be nice.
Nobody ever said politicians were too smart, they were just looking for a job and found one sucking off the public teat.
Once again, our government agencies get in the way. One agency has no clue what the other agency is doing. And when they come in conflict, its the American people that usually suffer.
The only viable means of meeting the demands of electric energy, and being able to nimbly adapt to the changing needs, will be done through the generation efforts of a mix of hydroelectric generation, and through steam powered generation. To create steam, there needs to be a heat source. That fuel has reliably been: coal, wood, natural gas, and nuclear. Both hydroelectric and fuel based generation have a greater serviceability and longevity as proven by many stations producing for many decades, with only needing updating periodically.
This constant drumming of “renewables” that are not only highly inefficient but in some weather conditions, ineffective, is not going to pass the muster. Even if Solar Roadways does get implemented, I don’t see it being utilized for the majority of power production in the country.
The advent of small scale modular nuclear power generation seems to have more promise than wind or solar. The benefits and safety of these nuclear power stations far out weigh our old style large station model. The boon is they can be uniform, allowing people to be trained to operate the system, and still allowing them the ability to be transfered as needs change, without additional training at each facility, unlike our current system. Currently each reactor, is a one-of-a-kind, resulting technicians to be rigorously trained on each different facility. The fact that these small scale nuclear power plants are transportable via a truck, and use incredibly small amouts of nuclear materials, means that they are far safer than what is currently being implemented.
Until we can meet our current supply needs, and harden and reinforce our infrastructure, forcing people to purchase vehicles that they overwhelmingly do not want is not the answer. We should also be exploring other avenues of technology besides electric power for transportation needs: hybrids, power via hydrogen, or compressed natural gas.