The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing March 5 to discuss meeting the growing demand for power, with each party’s members claiming the other side’s policies were hindrances. 

Data centers, industrial shoring and other factors are driving up demand now as thermal generation is retiring, subcommittee Chair Bob Latta (R-Ohio) said. 

“Meanwhile, subsidized intermittent energy resources and public policy decisions in favor of renewable energy are flooding interconnection queues and making baseload power from coal, natural gas and nuclear near uneconomic,” Latta said. “Generation developers continue experiencing ongoing supply chains constraints for distribution transformers and generation turbines.” 

The ranking member of the subcommittee, Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), pointed to recent disruptions in the federal bureaucracy. 

“It’s rather absurd that we’re tackling strengthening our electrical system while Elon Musk and the Trump administration are taking a sledgehammer to the Department of Energy, and especially the initiatives that strengthen and modernize the grid,” Castor said. “The new administration has spent weeks illegally shutting down DOE grants and loans and partnerships that make energy safe, reliable and affordable.” 

The administration’s tariffs on the country’s largest trading partners are making key grid and generation components more expensive, in addition to the higher power prices already being felt especially in northern states, she added. 

While members took shots at their political opponents, both Latta and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), ranking member of the full committee, said the growing demand was an opportunity to seize economic growth and keep the U.S. as the leader in artificial intelligence. 

“It means that companies are investing in America,” Pallone said. “The cutting-edge technologies are being developed here, and the families are making investments of decarbonizing their homes and vehicles. These are good things.” 

Basin Electric Power Cooperative CEO Todd Brickhouse said the co-op is experiencing some of the same rapid load growth as other parts of the country. It serves 3 million customers living across 12% of the U.S.’ territory in nine states. 

“Basin is currently increasing its generation portfolio by more than 40%, and we are increasing our transmission mileage by more than 20% over the next decade; we will spend $12 billion on these endeavors,” Brickhouse said. “That compares to currently $8.5 billion of assets on our balance sheet today.” 

Improvements in federal permitting would help get that work done, with Brickhouse recounting how one transmission project required two different assessments from different bureaus under the Department of the Interior. Basin is also adding 1,500 MW of new renewable resources to help meet that load growth. 

“This has required years of planning and development work, and these business decisions were made based on the availability of production tax credits [PTCs],” Brickhouse said. “We understand and we support the need to put our country on a sustainable physical path, but the immediate removal of PTCs will not allow utilities to plan for and avoid increased costs, and this will also immediately harm ratepayers.” 

The tariffs will also make that $12 billion of overall expenditure more costly for ratepayers as Basin recovers the funds from ratepayers over the next several decades, Brickhouse added. 

PJM is seeing load growth driven by new data centers and manufacturing, said Senior Vice President for Governmental and Member Services Asim Haque. 

“PJM expects its summer peak to climb to 220,000 MW over the next 15 years,” Haque said. “To compare, our all-time summer peak, which occurred in 2006, is 165,563 MW.” 

For years, PJM had a healthy reserve margin, but the load growth and some retirements are eating into that now, with the tighter supply-and-demand balance leading to higher capacity prices. With interconnection queue and capacity market reforms in recent years, the RTO has almost caught up with its queue backlog and is about to implement its new system, Haque said. 

“We want as much supply as we can get in order to meet this growing demand, whether that’s delaying retirements, new supply, that supply in our queue and even additional supply on top of that,” Haque said. 

PJM has cleared 50 GW of primarily renewable resources through its queue, which are having challenges related to financing, the supply chain, and state and federal siting processes. Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits for renewables would add financial strains to those projects, Haque said. 

One way the customers behind the new demand could help the situation is by ensuring that they can offer some flexibility to the grid, said Tyler Norris, a James B. Duke fellow at Duke University. 

The average use rate for the grid is just 53%, meaning that almost half of generation is sitting idle at most times, said Norris, the lead author on a recent study on data center load flexibility. (See US Grid has Flexible Headroom for Data Center Demand Growth.) 

“Our analysis finds that with modest flexibility from new large loads, the grid can accommodate significant demand growth without major new infrastructure,” Norris said. “The U.S. power system is already designed to handle extreme peaks and demand, meaning that in most hours, a substantial portion of the power system is unutilized. … 

“Flexible load strategies can provide a bridge, while long-lead resources such as new transmission and clean firm generation are developed.” 

Noel Black, Southern Co. senior vice president of regulatory affairs, argued his firm’s vertically integrated, traditionally regulated model has prepared the region it serves well for the new load growth, in part by completing the new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. 

“Straightforward regulatory models like ours, where the accountability for the grid is clearly understood, are producing results enabling this innovation economy,” Black said. “In short, the Southeast remains open for business. Regions with unusually complex regulatory processes are experiencing slower infrastructure build out. I think this may be why the concept of co-location has become so popular in certain parts of the country.” 

Co-location is a major issue in PJM, where Haque said the RTO would have more to say in 30 or 60 days, as it is currently working to implement a recent FERC order. (See FERC Launches Rulemaking on Thorny Issues Involving Data Center Co-location.) 

The Electric Power Supply Association, which represents independent power producers active in markets and some of which are pursuing co-location deals, released a statement on the hearing arguing that organized markets were poised to meet the growing demand. 

“Appropriately structured competitive wholesale markets can drive innovation and competition and ensure that ratepayers are not exposed to any unnecessary or inefficient investment,” EPSA CEO Todd Snitchler said. “Given the uncertainty surrounding how fast demand will grow in the coming decades, it is critical that investment risk be borne by developers and not shouldered by ratepayers.”