This webinar provides an overview of electricity load growth in the U.S. and its drivers and expected impacts. It focuses on how load growth particularly affects states and localities, and explores levers available to state and local policymakers to mitigate any negative consequences and capture any opportunities.

1. Managing Skyrocketing
US Electricity Demand:
A STATE AND LOCAL PERSPECTIVE
May 6, 2025
Ian Goldsmith, Michelle Levinson

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2
Speakers
Ian Goldsmith
Clean Energy Specialist,
Polsky Energy Center,
World Resources Institute
Michelle Levinson
Senior Manager,
eMobility Finance & Policy,
Polsky Energy Center,
World Resources Institute

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3
Panelists
Delegate Richard
C. (Rip) Sullivan
Jared Patton
Virginia House of Delegates,
6th District
Project Manager,
Department of Environment,
City of Chicago
Senior Manager,
Emerging Technology,
Smart Electric Power Alliance
Ann Collier

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5. What do we do?
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nations.

6. The new era of electric
demand growth
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7. A new era of
electricity demand is
here.
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 For about two decades, electricity demand in the US was
relatively stable, growing slowly and even declining in
some years.
 However, from January to December of 2023, the
national forecast for cumulative five-year electricity load
growth nearly doubled from 2.6% to 4.7%.
 By the end of 2024, the national forecast for growth in
peak summer peak demand quintupled, from 23 to 128
GW. That's roughly equivalent to 13 times New York
City's 2023 summer peak demand.
 Cumulative load five-year electricity load growth is now
at 15.9% by 2029.
Source: Strategic Industries Surging: Driving US Power Demand, Grid
Strategies, December 2024.

8. What’s driving new demand for electricity?
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 The main drivers of this new demand era
are large, energy-intensive commercial
and industrial loads, namely data centers
and re-shored manufacturing.
o Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and the Southwest
are experiencing massive growth in data
centers.
o Ohio, Michigan, and the Carolinas are seeing
new re-shored manufacturing raising demand.
 Residential and transportation
electrification are also playing a role in
markets like California, New York, and
New England.

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Data centers are the largest and fastest
growing source of demand right now.
 The release of OpenAI's ChatGPT platform in late 2022
jumpstarted a boom in data center construction across the
world.
 New data centers are being built to meet the energy-intensive
computational needs for complex AI models, as well as service
a growing demand for cloud services.
 Data centers could account for 6.7% to 12% of U.S. energy
consumption by 2028.
 A Rystad Energy analysis found that over 100 GW of new data
center capacity has been announced to come online over the
next 10 years.

10. What are the potential
impacts of load growth?
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Utilities, generators, and companies are
racing to meet new demand...
 Utilities need all of the generation they can get to serve new load, spurring investment and
development in clean energy.
 Speed to market becoming the most important factor, which is providing a boost to solar and
storage technologies.
 Many tech companies with strong sustainability goals are exploring models for using clean
energy to support their data center buildout:
o In September 2024, Microsoft and Constellation Energy announced that it would restart one of the reactors
at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant as part of a power purchase agreement.
o Meta struck a deal with Sage Geosystems to buy 150 MW of geothermal power for its data centers, beginning
operation in 2027.
o Google announced a deal with Intersect Power to develop co-located "energy parks" with renewables and
storage sited next to its data centers.

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...including by burning fossil fuels.
Source: "A utility promised to stop burning coal. Then Google and Meta came to town." Evan Halper, Washington
Post, October 12, 2024.
 Even as many look to clean energy options to
support load growth development, new load
growth has spurred demand for new gas
generation and support keeping existing
fossil fuel plants online.
 An IEEFA report from January 2025 found
that utilities in Virginia, Georgia, North
Carolina, and South Carolina are planning to
build over 20 GW of new natural gas
capacity by 2040, largely attributed to data
center and manufacturing load.
In Nebraska, the arrival of new data centers led
the Omaha Public Power District to indefinitely
delay retirement of two coal-burning generators
next to a disadvantaged community. ​

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Large load
integration presents
affordability
concerns.
 As demand rises, ratepayers are likely to increased
bills.
 In deregulated regions with electricity markets,
wholesale electricity prices could rise between 14%
and 22%.
 In vertically integrated regions, the costs of building
new generation to meet demand (and, in many
cases, any fuel needed to power new generation) will
be passed on to consumers.
 In the worst-case scenario, any "stranded" or
unnecessary assets would still need to be paid by
ratepayers.
Source: "Power surge: Navigating US electricity demand growth." ICF, Chandramowli
et. Al. October 22, 2024.

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Reliability and grid stewardship could be
threatened with increased demand.
 The U.S. power grid is aging and already experiences
significant constraints. Additionally, increasingly
severe weather is leading to more frequent power
disruptions.
 Transmission buildout takes many years and faces a
host of barriers, including limited planning processes,
cost allocation debates, and permitting issues.
 Data centers present a particular challenges, since
most have strict "uptime" requirements starting at
99.9%; this limits data center's flexibility potential and
amplifies the demand impacts on the grid.
 All of this means that increased demand could make
existing shortfalls in the U.S. transmission system
worse.
Source: National Transmission Needs Study. National Renewable Energy Laboratory,
U.S. Department of Energy. October 2023.

15. How can state and local
policymakers address new
demand for electricity in the
US?
03

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Three strategies for state and local
policymakers include...
Manage
demand
directly
Address new
generation
needs
Expand
transmission
capacity

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The most direct pathway is to look to the
sources of load growth themselves.
 State and local policymakers have significant power to
manage development and land use within their
jurisdictions, and can use that power to engage directly
with new sources of load.
 Many states have existing tax incentives for data centers,
which are tied to achieving specific outcomes (investment
figures, # of full time jobs, meeting energy performance
standards, etc.)
 Zoning laws give local governments significant ability to
shape and manage sources of load growth through smart
planning.
 States have powers to address cost allocation issues for
new infrastructure and generation and direct regulators to
analyze these issues.
Licensed under CCYYSA.

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Supporting clean energy policies to meet
demand  On the supply side, policymakers can look for ways to
make sure clean energy is being used to meet demand
instead of
 Cities and states can directly procure clean energy for
themselves or their communities through a variety of
mechanisms, including green tariffs and power
purchase agreements.
 States are well situated to reducing the timelines
associated with permitting and siting of new large-
scale generation and transmissions facilities to ensure
that necessary infrastructure additions keep pace with
growing demand.
 State and local governments can also support adoption
of distributed energy resources (DERs), such as solar
and energy storage, to address load growth.

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Reliability and grid stewardship could be
threatened with increased demand.
 State policymakers have authority to regulate how utility transmission plans are conducted
and to introduce requirements and incentives that encourage transmission capacity
growth.
o Multiple states like Minnesota, Massachusetts and California have passed laws requiring utilities to
consider grid-enhancing technologies, which are designed to add more carrying capacity to existing
transmission lines.
o The Montana legislature ordered its Public Service Commission to establish an incentive for building
new transmission lines with “advanced conductors” capable of transmitting more energy than
standard technologies.
 FERC Orders 1920 and 1920-A give states and local decision-makers a pathway to provide
data on their laws, regulations, and policy goals in regional Long-Term Transmission
Planning Processes, directly informing transmission buildout.

20. Panel
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Panelists
Delegate Richard
C. (Rip) Sullivan
Jared Patton
Virginia House of
Delegates,
6th District
Project Manager,
Department of
Environment,
City of Chicago
Senior Manager,
Emerging Technology,
Smart Electric Power
Alliance
Ann Collier

22. Wrap-Up
05

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Wrap-Up
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Please visit the article this presentation is
based on by visiting WRI's website.
If you have any questions, please feel free
to reach out to Michelle and Ian at
Michelle.Levinson@wri.org or
ian.goldsmith@wri.org.
Stay tuned for more analysis and
research from WRI on load growth and
data center issues.
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24. Thank You.
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