Happy almost new year! Before we turn the page on 2024, it’s worth looking back on the stories and major developments that shaped – even reshaped – the energy landscape over the past 12 months.

Years of warnings about rapidly eroding grid reliability collided with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA’s) regulatory agenda and the emergence of soaring electricity demand from electrification, manufacturing reshoring and the rapid build-out of hyperscale data centers. Rising electricity prices – and soaring capacity prices – played an important role in election season where inflation and the state of the economy likely proved decisive at the ballot box. And, despite now a decade of prognostications of its imminent decline, global coal demand reached a new high in 2023 and appears to have done so again in 2024. As energy security, grid reliability concerns, soaring power demand and efforts to tame energy inflation reshape the global energy picture, coal is once again reaffirming its importance. Here is a collection of posts that captured the year that was and paint a picture of what we can expect in 2025. Thanks for reading!

Power Demand Growth Gets Another Enormous Upward Revision

In a year defined by surging power demand, it was fitting that that year-end brought another huge upward revision in demand. According to analysis from Grid Strategies, a leading power sector consulting firm, U.S. electricity demand could jump an astonishing 128 gigawatts (GW) over just the next five years driven largely by the data center and manufacturing boom. The new estimate represents a five-fold increase in power demand growth forecasts over just the past two years.

Electricity Inflation at the Ballot Box

Donald Trump’s decisive win in the presidential election appears to have been fueled by broad discontent with the economy and notably inflation. ABC News preliminary exit poll results found that more than two-thirds of voters said the economy is in bad shape and the share of people who said they are worse off under the Biden administration (45%) was the highest ever in presidential exit polls that have asked the question. The role that electricity price inflation played in voter discontent shouldn’t be overlooked. According to CBS News’ price tracker, the cost of electricity has increased 28.5% since 2019.

The Numbers Aren’t Adding Up

At the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s annual Reliability Technical Conference on Oct. 16, the nation’s top grid reliability expert sounded like a doctor delivering grim news. North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) CEO Jim Robb told attendees, “We have a very simple math problem: the trend lines for electricity supply and demand are moving in the wrong direction to sustain reliability.” Robb debunked the idea that there are any quick or easy fixes. He underscored that surging power demand means interstate transmission and energy storage can’t solve the math problem alone. He said, “while a lot of people would like to say we can solve this problem through transmission, we can solve this problem through batteries … we need generation in this country.”

EPA Doubles Down on the Grid Reliability Crisis

In April, EPA rolled out a suite of rules – including the CPP 2.0 with its unlawful carbon capture mandate – to force coal plant closures while ignoring the collective impact of the rules on grid reliability. As NMA’s president and CEO Rich Nolan remarked at the time, “For the last three years, the administration has methodically developed and executed a comprehensive strategy to force the closure of well-operating coal plants. It has refused to account for irrefutable evidence that electricity demand is soaring, disregarded validated reliability warnings from grid experts related to coal plant closures, and ignored the basic fact that there is no adequate replacement ready to replace the sorely needed, dispatchable generating capacity coal provides once it is shuttered.”

Grid Operators Tell the Court: EPA’s Rule is a Dire Threat to Reliability

The nation’s grid operators warned the EPA that the then proposed so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP) 2.0 was a direct and alarming threat to grid reliability. Those concerns were shrugged off as EPA pushed forward and finalized an unworkable and unlawful rule. Four of the nation’s largest grid operators, led by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), filed a joint “friend of the court” brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to send EPA back to work on a rule that simply won’t work. MISO was also joined by PJM Interconnection, Southwest Power Pool and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which together account for ensuring electric reliability for 30 states and the District of Columbia.

Soaring Costs with Little to Show

In California, power prices, already some of the most expensive in the country, have exploded over the past decade. For a state that has trumpeted its effort to lead the energy transition, California has trailblazed a path no one can – or will want to – follow. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, power prices for many Californians have jumped 82% in the past 10 years. For many Californians, the extraordinary cost of electricity is now untenable. Working-class Californians are now paying 65% more for their monthly electricity bills than they’re paying for rent.

Pssst: Global Coal Use Hit Another Record in 2023

Global coal use set a record in 2023 and could eclipse it this year. As Bloomberg’s commodity editor, Javier Blas, calculated, every six hours the world consumes enough to build a coal replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The International Energy Agency which has predicted peak coal demand multiple times – and keeps getting it wrong – now admits, under current trends, coal use in 2050 is going to be higher than it was in 2000.

Missing the Heart of the Story

Early in 2024, both The Washington Post and The New York Times discovered the sudden reemergence of soaring electricity demand and its collision with the nation’s teetering supply of power. The Post feature, which ran on the front page the morning of the State of the Union, was dramatically titled, “Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power.” Both articles dug into the outsized role of data centers and AI, alongside electrification and ballooning investment in domestic manufacturing, in driving new demand. And both pieces warned that the nation’s supply of electricity is unlikely to keep pace. But these features completely missed the heart of the story on why the nation is rapidly approaching an electricity shortfall. As NMA’s president and CEO Rich Nolan explained in a letter to the editor to The Post, failing to cover the rapid loss of the nation’s coal fleet due to regulatory pressure was a glaring omission.