Grid operator warns there’s a chance of a power shortage this summer. However, Congress wants to slow down the growth of our quickest source of new electricity.

The good news is that the lights (and the air conditioning) will probably come on this summer.

The bad is that word “probably.”

PJM Interconnection, the organization that runs the regional power grid of which Virginia is a part, has warned that under “extreme scenarios” it may not have enough power this summer, and will need certain users to reduce their electricity usage. 

This is the first time that PJM has issued such a warning. (See full statement below.)

In a more perfect world, none of us would ever know about PJM; it’s one of those things that operates in the background and we usually only hear about when something goes wrong. Increasingly, though, PJM is turning up in the news through no fault of its own: Thanks largely to the growth of data centers in Northern Virginia (but also the growth of data centers everywhere and our general desire to plug in more devices), we’re seeing power demand grow, both nationally and especially in Virginia.

Last year, the nation’s electricity usage grew 3%, the fifth-largest increase this century, according to the energy think tank Ember. 

Virginia is already short of energy in one sense: We don’t produce enough of it, so we’re now the nation’s biggest importer of electricity. For those concerned about cost, this power tends to be more expensive than what we produce in-state. For those concerned about the environment, this imported power also tends to be from carbon-intensive sources. Both these things argue for Virginia to produce more power — and more clean power.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly’s research agency, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, has warned that the state’s electric demand will triple by 2040 if data center growth continues without restraint. Data centers probably won’t grow without restraint; we’re already starting to see some pushback, but not nearly enough for those who want to see more restrictions — so whether the tripling of power demand happens or not, everyone expects that we’ll see some fairly large amount of new power demand.

This is where things start to get complicated.

The state’s Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020, requires a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. That’s spurred a wave of solar development across rural Virginia — except now a growing number of rural localities are rejecting solar projects. Last year, for the first time, local governments turned down more megawatts than they approved, according to the Virginia Solar Database maintained by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. It turns out that a lot of people in rural Virginia don’t see solar farms as beautiful sources of clean energy but rather as ugly blight that’s turning rural landscape into an unwanted industrial one. Those approval trends have reversed this year — with most projects getting the OK — but the overall trends have raised the question of whether Virginia can realistically meet its clean energy goals. 

This past session of the General Assembly grappled with ways to encourage more solar development but failed to agree on a solution. Legislators representing rural areas (mostly Republicans but it was a Democrat who cast the key vote) want to avoid anything that seems like a mandate. Democrats representing suburban districts sponsored legislation to promote more rooftop solar, including putting solar over parking lots, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed those measures as “piecemeal changes to fix the discredited Virginia Clean Economy Act.” Of course, Democrats don’t think it’s discredited at all, so there’s a basic philosophical impasse over energy policy.

The result is that Virginia policy hasn’t changed but power demands have. The state still mandates a carbon-free power grid but is dependent on solar-skeptic localities to approve the details. We’ve also had situations where localities have approved power-guzzling data centers but rejected power-producing solar projects. That strikes some as hypocritical but also reflects the basic dynamics of local governments: Local governments are responsible for encouraging economic growth, generating tax revenue and keeping tax rates as low as they can. They have zero responsibility for energy policy. That’s somebody else’s problem.

Now we have more complications. 

First, President Donald Trump wants to encourage the use of more artificial intelligence — which is very energy-intensive. Even if Trump didn’t encourage AI, the marketplace is embracing more AI anyway, and that will mean we will need even more power. 

Trump has also declared an “energy emergency.” However, the “big, beautiful bill” moving through Congress would stifle the growth of the one form of energy that is a) the quickest to get up and running into the grid and b) accounted for 81% of the new energy added to the grid last year. We’re talking about solar. 

Doing away with the energy tax credits as the House spending and tax bill proposes would have an immediate impact on the grid by slowing energy development — at a time when PJM is warning that we need every electron we can produce. Ben Norris of the Solar Energy Industries Association recently told the Virginia Commission on Electric Utility Regulation that the House bill would kill the development of enough solar to power the entire state of Pennsylvania. 

Youngkin and other Republicans have traditionally touted an “all of the above” energy policy but Trump doesn’t believe in “all of the above.” He has no interest in renewables; he wants to see more fossil fuels — coal and natural gas — and more nuclear. 

Let’s not get hung up on the climate arguments; let’s look just at development times. 

Natural gas

Those of us in the western part of the state just saw that it took a decade to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which pumps natural gas from northwestern West Virginia to a transmission station in Pittsylvania County. Building an actual natural gas plant is a three- to five-year endeavor. 

The New York Times recently reported that there’s a three- to four-year backlog for the giant turbines that make natural gas plants work. For that reason, and others, “by some estimates, it now costs two or three times as much to build a gas-fired power plant as it did a few years ago,” the Times reported. One consequence: “In some parts of the country, solar panels and batteries are likely to be cheaper, energy executives and consultants said.” And quicker.

Nuclear

It took 17 and 18 years respectively for the two most recent nuclear reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia to go from permit application to operation. Trump would like to speed that up but we don’t know how much nuclear development can be sped up. The new species of reactors — small modular reactors — are supposed to be quicker (and cheaper) to build than the larger, conventional variety, but we also don’t know how long those will take to build. The only operational SMRs in the world are currently in China and Russia, probably not examples we want to emulate when it comes to safety. Canada currently has an SMR under construction, the first in North America. The utility broke ground in 2022; site preparation alone took three years and was just finished this year. Construction of the actual reactor began this year, with a projected completion date of 2030 — five years off. 

Coal

Trump would like to see more coal but the market reality is that no utility is building new coal plants. Even Appalachian Power, a coal-heavy utility whose service area includes coal country, has said it has no interest in burning more coal because coal is more expensive than other fuels.

Wind

Trump doesn’t like wind. Environmentalists do, but wind also takes a long time to build. The Rocky Forge wind farm in Botetourt County — which would be Virginia’s first on-shore commercial wind farm — was proposed in 2014 but didn’t start construction until this year. It isn’t supposed to start generating power until late 2026. That’s a lag time of 12 years from start to finish. Trump has moved to block most development of offshore wind. That won’t affect Dominion Energy’s offshore wind project because it’s already under construction off the coast of Virginia Beach. However, the development time there is even longer than on-shore wind. Dominion began planning its offshore wind project in 2012 and it’s not expected to be fully operational until 2027 — a span of 15 years, which starts approaching the development time for a nuclear reactor. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.)

The point is that all these forms of energy take a long time to build, but we have growing energy demands now. The only form of energy that is quick to develop is solar, with a timeline usually measured in months or a little more than a year for most projects — yet that’s the form of energy that Congress is now moving to slow down. We used to think of natural gas as a “bridge fuel” between the retirement of coal and the large-scale deployment of renewables. However, those who want natural gas (or nuclear or whatever) may need to think of solar as the bridge fuel because it’s the only thing we can plug in quickly. Whether anti-solar people like it or not, solar is where the action is now. In its forecast, PJM said that “renewable resources will be more important than ever this summer to maintain reliability.”

In response to the PJM warning, the U.S. Department of Energy ordered a Pennsylvania utility that was planning to retire an oil and gas plant this summer to keep it open. However, keeping the same amount of energy is not the same as creating more of it, and that’s what we need. Think of this as ordering a product online (which also drives up some energy demands): The online store offers a variety of energy solutions. However, the one with the quickest delivery time is solar, which, if you order it now, you might have as early as next year. For gas, you might have to wait five years depending on where you are. For wind or nuclear, more than a decade. Coal is no longer available because the wholesaler (the utility) no longer wants to stock it. And other products you’ve read about — fusion and geothermal — aren’t on the market yet. So what’s it going to be? If we truly have an emergency and need the power now, the only immediate solution seems to be solar while we wait for whatever it is you really want.

If you’re a resident of rural Virginia who doesn’t want to look at a solar farm across the road, the end of those solar energy tax credits are a good thing — less pressure on Southside and elsewhere. If you philosophically think that we shouldn’t be favoring one form of energy over another, then doing away with those tax credits is also a good thing — more ideological purity. However, if you like the lights coming on, you may want to wonder why we’re trying to shut down an energy development boom now in hopes of some other energy source that might take years to get online. 

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