US Electricity Demand Predicted to Rise by 15% by 2029.

[NNadir]

Everything I love, "percent talk" and soothsaying and a "by 2029" statement.

Anyone familiar with my writing will recognize that I often ridicule soothsaying about energy, particularly those claiming "by {insert year}" such and such will be true, usually in connection with the outbreak of a so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here, and won't come.

So be it. Take the following article with a "grain of salt" although it is clear that demand for electricity is rising, mostly for computation needs for both good and bad reasons. The article:

Grid Strategies report: U.S. power demand dramatically increases yet again

Electricity demand in the United States is expected to increase five times faster than previously estimated, with a projected 15-percent growth in load growth by 2029, according to a new report by Grid Strategies LLC.

The rapid rise is being fueled by the expansion of industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence (AI), and battery production, says the 38-page report, entitled “Strategic Industries Surging: Driving U.S. Power Demand,” which updates Grid Strategies 2023 report.

“Whereas power demand doubled last year from the prior year, lo and behold it has doubled again, so it’s a lot,” said Grid Strategies President Rob Gramlich during a press call on Thursday.

“It’s hard to think of an electricity industry process that is not affected by power demand, whether it’s utility integrated resource plans, rate cases, transmission planning, resource adequacy, you name it,” Gramlich said. “So, this is very relevant to all of those and to electricity policy in Washington, the states, and regions,”

“I think we were expecting some new information, but I don’t think we were expecting to be surprised,” added John Wilson, vice president at Grid Strategies, who along with Gramich and Zach Zimmerman, the research and policy manager at Grid Strategies, authored the report.

“The big news is that the five-year load growth is up fivefold to 128 gigawatts based on FERC-714 data, as well as new reports from the utilities and planning regions,” Wilson said during the call...

If one opens the report, which bills itself as being part of a "clean energy initiative" one can see that the authors of the report apparently never learned a damned thing about the laws of thermodynamics, since it's chock full of hydrogen bullshit, as if destroying the exergy of dangerous fossil fuels to make hydrogen will make things worse, not better.

Hydrogen is a dirty fuel overwhelmingly made from the steam reformation of dangerous fossil fuels, with a little Potemkin bullshit about the useless solar and wind industries offered up as a dishonest distraction (often involving China) Reality:

EST: Chinese Hydrogen Production Is Making Climate Change Worse.

(cf: Subsidizing Grid-Based Electrolytic Hydrogen Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Coal Dominated Power Systems Liqun Peng, Yang Guo, Shangwei Liu, Gang He, and Denise L. Mauzerall Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (12), 5187-5195)

This reality, that the authors of the report apparently don't know anything about science, or about what "clean energy" might be however, does not automatically discount the soothsaying about energy demand rising. It appears that data crunching and manufacturing, at least until the Orange one undoes Biden's economic successes, will rise; with the caveat that the United States will shortly be run by a complete and total idiot, and that with this in mind, soothsaying is something quite different than the reality obtained.

Have a nice weekend.

[NickB79]

1. Goddamn AI systems

ChatGPT can't figure out that 3/8 is bigger than 5/16, but we're going to build vast data centers to power it anyway.