From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb

The Department of Energy (DOE) released a new report Monday warning of impending blackouts if the United States continues to shutter power plants without adequately replacing retiring capacity.

DOE warned in its Monday report that blackouts could increase by 100% by 2030 if the U.S. continues to retire power plants without sufficient replacements, and that the electricity grid is not prepared to meet the demand of power-hungry data centers in the years to come without more reliable generation coming online quickly. The report specifically highlighted wind and solar, two resources pushed by Biden, as responsible for eroding grid stability and advised that dispatchable generation from sources like coal, oil, gas and nuclear are necessary to meet the anticipated U.S. power demand.

“This report affirms what we already know: The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas,” DOE Secretary Chris Wright said. “In the coming years, America’s reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power. President Trump’s administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure. If we are going to keep the lights on, win the AI race, and keep electricity prices from skyrocketing, the United States must unleash American energy.”

All regional grid systems across the U.S. are expected to lose reliability in the coming years without the addition of more reliable power, according to the DOE’s report. The U.S. will need an additional 100 gigawatts of new peak hour supply by 2030, with data centers projected to require as much as half of this electricity, the report estimates; for reference, one gigawatt is enough to power up to one million homes.

President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day back in the Oval Office and signed an executive order on April 8 ordering DOE to review and identify at-risk regions of the electrical grid, which the report released Monday does. In contrast, former President Joe Biden cracked down on conventional power sources like coal with stringent regulations while unleashing a gusher of subsidies for green energy developments.

Electricity demand is projected to hit a record high in the next several years, surging 25% by 2030, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data and a recent ICF International report. Demand was essentially static for the last several years, and skyrocketing U.S. power demand presents an “urgent need” for electricity resources, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a major grid watchdog.

Wright has also issued several emergency orders to major grid operators since April. New Orleans experienced blackouts just two days after Wright issued an emergency order on May 23 to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the regional grid operator covering the New Orleans area.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Make no mistake about it, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed into law on Friday by President Donald Trump falls neatly in line with the Trump energy and climate agenda. Despite complaints by critics of the deal that Majority Leader John Thune struck with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to soften the bill’s effort to end wind and solar subsidies from the Orwellian 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the OBBBA continues – indeed, accelerates – the Trumpian energy revolution.

Leaders in the oil and gas industry, hamstrung at every opportunity by the Biden presidency, hailed the bill as a chance to move back into some semblance of boom times. Tim Stewart, President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told his members in a memo that, “For the oil and gas industry, the bill…signals a transformative opportunity to enhance domestic production.”

API CEO Mike Sommers also praised the OBBBA as a positive step for his members: “This historic legislation will help usher in a new era of energy dominance by unlocking opportunities for investment, opening lease sales and expanding access to oil and natural gas development.

While leaders of organizations like those must curb their enthusiasm to some extent in their public statements, they and their peers must be somewhat amazed at how much real substantive change the thin GOP majorities shepherded by Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to stuff into this bill. This industry, historically an easily demonized bogeyman for Democrats and too often ignored by previous Republican presidents, does not experience days as encouraging as July 3 was in the nation’s capital.

Even so, many Republicans, especially in the House, remained unsatisfied by amendments the Senate made to the bill related to IRA subsidy rollbacks. To help Speaker Johnson hold the party’s narrow House majority together, President Trump committed the executive branch to strict enforcement of the new limitations, and promised the White House will work with congressional allies to move a major deregulation package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

But the OBBBA as passed is chock full of energy and environment-related provisions. FTI Consulting, a business consultancy with a major presence in Washington, DC, published a quick analysis Thursday that projects natural gas and nuclear as the biggest winners as the OBBBA’s impacts begin to take hold across the United States. Interestingly, the analysis also projects battery storage to expand more rapidly over the next five years even as wind and solar suffer from the phasing-out of their IRA subsidies.

The side deal struck by Thune and Murkowski is likely to result in significant new investment into wind and solar facilities as developers strive to get as many projects on the books as possible to meet the “commenced construction” requirement by the July 4, 2026 deadline. The bill’s previous language would have required projects to be placed into service by that time. But even that softer requirement will almost certainly cause a flow of capital investment out of wind and solar once that deadline passes, given the reality that many of their projects are not sustainable without constant flows of government subsidies.

What it all means is that the OBBBA, combined with all the administration’s prior moves to radically shift the direction of federal energy and climate policy away from intermittent energy and electric vehicles back to traditional forms of power generation and internal combustion cars, effectively reset the policy playing field back to 2019, prior to the COVID pandemic. That was a time when America had become as energy independent as it had been in well over half a century and was approaching the “Energy Dominance” position so dear to President Trump’s heart.

Trump’s signing of the OBBBA gives the oil and gas, nuclear, and even the coal industry a chance at a do over. It is an opportunity that comes with great pressure, both from government and the public, to perform. That means rapid expansion in gas power generation unseen in 20 years, rapid development of next generation nuclear, and even a probable chance to permit and build new coal capacity in the near future.

Second chances like this do not come around often. If these great industries fail to grab this brass ring and run with it, it may never come around again. Let’s go, folks.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.