Happy Wednesday. Apparently I’m just someone who has become an energy policy nerd, so today I’m bringing you another sad story about American energy! This one, from Futurism, is about our miserable power grid.
The US electrical grid is facing a stress test like never before. Thanks to a perfect storm of AI power consumption, climate crisis, crony capitalism, and a president bent on uprooting perfectly good energy infrastructure, the country’s already-struggling power system is rapidly crumbling as costs balloon into the stratosphere.
A recent analysis by Bloomberg underscores just how dire it’s getting. In the country’s largest continuous grid — a 13-state monstrosity managed by PJM Interconnection LLC — the media company notes that power costs have set record highs for two years in a row.
Spanning from Indiana to eastern New Jersey, PJM’s footprint includes some 65 million residents, as well as a constellation of tech industry mega-sites known as Data Center Alley. While the cost of electricity is expected to rise drastically with the growth of AI over the next few years, Bloomberg notes that, in PJM states like Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, nearly 25 percent of residents already can’t afford their utility bills.
Compounding these costs is our aging electrical infrastructure. The article goes on to cite data suggesting that nearly 1/3 of our transmission infrastructure and nearly 1/2 of our distribution infrastructure is approaching the end of its useful life span.
So energy is more expensive, more fragile than ever, and also we’re halting any efforts to find better sources of energy. All of this seems like a reckoning will come due shortly. So… yay?
Be kind and thoughtful today. Cheers.