Vistra spends $1.9 billion to buy gas plants. NRG spends $12 billion to buy gas plants. Constellation spends $16.4 billion to buy gas plants. That’s $30 billion and not a single new gas plant built. Folks, we’ve got to build new generation. Not just change the names on the gate.

Tax credits for renewables are expiring in the coming years. Less widely known is that construction costs for gas-fired power plants are soaring at unprecedented rates. This will be reflected in electric bills for years to come.

The country with electrons wins the future. We got work to do

Some good news: ERCOT is predicting a less than 1% risk of rotating outages this August. That's a big drop from last year's forecasted risk of 12%. The main reason for the reduced risk? The rapid growth of battery storage, Sara DiNatale writes: expressnews.com/business/artic…

Reuters: NextEra CEO says renewables needed as bridge to expanding gas power

And relatedly: China had 887 gigawatts of installed solar at the end of 2024, and has installed another 198 gigawatts through May. We have the first of (hopefully numerous) Solar Terawatt countries.

Also notable: PJM clocked in Monday at 161 gigawatts -- which exceeds the parameters that PJM is procuring for in its coming capacity auction for delivery in 2026-27, In other words, actual demand already has leapfrogged the market operator’s projected demand.

i've been a drug dealer this whole time

People don’t realize that: 1) China is absolutely dominating us in deploying solar. 2) A majority of 2025 Chinese solar projects have been distributed (rooftop, behind the meter) rather than “utility-scale”.

Shanu Mathew Rough cut comparison of the electricity intensity of the economy

Reversing which fuels get subsidized and which get penalized every time control of Washington shifts is about the stupidest way to run an energy system that needs long term planning and stable supply chains.

CHART OF THE DAY: America has an electricity problem. Retail power costs in the US are rising very, very quickly (>35% over the last 5 years) — in some part due to expensive grid investment. My @Opinion colleague Liam Denning has the details here: bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

“Why don’t we do this? When you build your building, build your own electric plant. And nobody took it seriously. They didn’t believe me that it was happening. And I said no I’m serious. You’re going to build your own Con Edison in New York. You’re going to make your own.”

An important note on the PJM auction: The ~$329 megawatt-day level was a @FERC-approved cap. Based on the auction data, investment bank Jefferies has calculated what the "uncapped" price would had been if not by the regulator's intervention: an eye-popping ~$389 megawatt-day.

Abstract: "Electricity bills are going to rise" Concrete: "This Missouri utility wants to raise rates at least 30%" Direct from the Halcyon feed storage.googleapis.com/core_entities/…

MS Sees 'big 4 capex' approaching $500bn+ by 2027 now... Eye watering numbers

Why has electricity gotten so expensive in America? Here’s what I found for Heatmap News: 1. More spending on poles, wires, and transformers 2. Higher disaster costs 3. The post-Ukraine gas shock working its way into rates 4. Higher demand from AI, data centers, etc

Generation from coal, hydro & nuclear will stay roughly flat through the 2020s, which means all growth has to come from gas, solar & wind. Gas has very tight supply chains. Wind and solar are increasingly difficult to permit. I'm increasingly worried we're headed for the cliff.

Returns while each president was in office: Oil and Gas E&P ETF (XOP) Trump -57% Biden +92% Trump 2 -11% Clean Energy ETF (ICLN) Trump 1 +277% Biden -63% Trump 2 +46%

The only state in the US that has seen their electricity prices fall since 2019 is North Dakota. Over the same period: - Wind generation is up 34% - Solar generation is up 425% - Coal generation is down 8%