Booming Power Demand is Slowing Climate Progress For US Utilities
Turbines from the Mount Storm Wind Farm behind Dominion’s Mount Storm coal power plant in West Virginia. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Sierra Club analysis finds that U.S. utilities are planning a huge expansion of fossil gas-plants — a shift that’s incompatible with climate goals.
As climate goals creep closer, the U.S. utility sector remains far away from where it needs to be.
For the fourth year in a row, the Sierra Club reports that most of the largest U.S. utilities are well off track to meet the Biden administration’s goal of cutting electricity-sector emissions by 80 percent by 2030 from a 2005 baseline. That’s a key milestone for meeting U.S. Paris Agreement commitments and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
And according to the environmental group’s latest “Dirty Truth” report, released Wednesday, many major utilities are not only off track to reach climate goals but are in a worse position than they were last year.
This backslide is largely due to the abrupt surge in U.S. electricity demand. In the past year or so, many utilities have dramatically increased their power demand forecasts as new data centers, factories, and electric vehicles look to plug into the grid. Many of these utilities — though not all — have asked state regulators for permission to build new gas plants and keep coal plants open longer to serve these rising loads.
But Cara Folger, report co-author and Sierra Club deputy director of research, strategy, and analysis, said this prioritization of fossil fuels offers evidence that too many utilities have failed to proactively embrace cleaner, cheaper alternatives. 10-09-24
