Power Hungry: why gas and coal alone won’t keep up with US power demand growth

While gas and coal generation will play a large role in enabling strong load growth, robust investment in renewables and storage is required to meet US power demand growth through 2030. We forecast ~90 GW of peak demand growth through 2030, less than a wide sample of large load commitments made by utilities. Meeting this demand growth is the largest challenge facing the US power sector. Existing coal and gas plants could meet ~47 GW of peak demand growth by ramping up utilization, assuming no retirements. This is less than 30% of the sampled large load commitments made by US utilities and could be limited based on geography and aging equipment.