18 Months Into The Shitshow, Trumpy Pro-Coal Anti-Renewable Rhetoric Blowing Over An Electrical Grid On The Brink
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.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/07/17/trump-has-spent-billions-energy-an-electricity-boom-has-yet-materialize/
https://wapo.st/4h3vTpN
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