The Madness of the U.S. Self-Inflicted Clean Energy Crisis Continues, Although Trump Is Trying to Restore Sanity

Guest Post from Dick Storm.

Electricity has been heralded as the lifeblood of our economy. Little has been written on the fact that electricity is secondary energy and that a form of primary energy is needed to generate electricity. America has required right at 100 quadrillion BTUs of Primary energy for the last twenty five years to power our economy, industrial production and our freedom of transportation. This is. +/- about 7 Quads. In this article I will show why coal must and should be included in the primary energy mix to provide up to about 20% of America’s primary energy for at least the next twenty years.

Electricity generation uses about a third of the total primary energy consumed in the U.S. and Primary energy comes from five main sources:

• Petroleum

• Natural gas

• Coal

• Nuclear

• Renewables

The primary energy produced and consumed by the U.S. is reported by the U.S. DOE Energy Information Administration (EIA). To arrive at a standard reporting format, the primary energy is reported in BTUs (British Thermal Units). Here is the chart of primary energy use for the year 2023.

Conventional forms of energy: petroleum, natural gas, nuclear and coal provide over 90% of the energy that is the lifeblood of America! Solar and wind after decades of subsidies are minor contributions to the overall supply of primary energy at about 3%. Chris Wright in testimony before Congress correctly referred to wind and solar as “Parasites”. Wind and solar consume billions of investment dollars for very little benefit to our country.

How Much Energy in BTUs is Used by Each Citizen?

The chart above shows 93.6 Quadrillion BTUs of total primary energy used during 2023. If the total 93.6 Quads is divided by 340 million citizens then the per capita energy use comes out to be about 280 million BTUs per person/per year. For discussion purposes, let’s round that up to 300 million BTUs.

Remember, this is total primary energy and about a third of it is used to generate electricity. The other 2/3’s is used for transportation, heating, cooking, commercial, industrial production and other residential uses.

How is Primary Energy Used?

Here is a chart of the five sectors of Primary energy use, since 1950. The five sectors being: electricity generation, transportation, industrial, residential and commercial.

The main point of this essay is to point out that it takes a certain amount of Primary Energy to power our lives. That amount is about 100 Quads today and is projected to grow as AI and the transition to more electrification of transportation and reshoring of American manufacturing is achieved.

There are only four main sources of massive amounts of primary energy to satisfy this demand. These are petroleum, natural gas, coal and nuclear. The expected contributions of solar and wind are almost insignificant when considered in the mix of primary energy.

The U.S. total primary energy consumption has remained relatively constant at about 100 Quads since the year 2000. The previous article digs into more detail of the 100 quadrillion BTUs required to power the U.S.

Do you remember when our government leaders and many organizations were cheering to electrify everything? Perhaps this is a good time to discuss “primary energy”. The four sources discussed above are the viable choices at our disposal. The pro-rating energy use of each American citizen is about 315 million BTUs per year. This totals about 100 Quadrillion BTUs. If our economy is to grow, our freedom of travel maintained and our food production, comforts and conveniences kept the same, let’s say we will likely continue to require 100 quadrillion BTUs plus the growth of up to 2% per year for AI, population growth and reshoring manufacturing.

Growth of 2% per year doesn’t seem like much does it? Well, let’s look at it another way. Two percent growth will result in the doubling of electricity in about 35 years. There are forecasting experts that have predicted 78% electricity Demand growth by 2050. So the 2% per year and forecasts are pretty close. Let’s stick to electricity generation which uses about a third of the total primary energy consumed.

According to American Public Power, “electricity demand in the United States will increase 2% annually and 50% by 2050, according to a new study conducted by PA Consulting and released by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.”

“Driven by record growth in data centers and e-mobility, the study highlights innovative technology and policy solutions to maintain a reliable and affordable energy system through this new age of demand growth,” NEMA said.

“The study, “A Reliable Grid for an Electric Future,” predicts that growth in electricity demand in the United States will be driven by a 300% rise in energy consumption by data centers and a 9,000% increase in energy consumption required for e-mobility and charging, with overall electricity projected to grow from 21% of final energy use to 32% by 2050.”

“Additionally, consumption changes will vary by U.S. region and will vary across markets over time, driven primarily by data centers in the next decade and EVs in the longer term”.

“The Mid-Atlantic and Texas will see the largest data center electricity demand growth through 2035, and the Northeast and West will experience the largest electricity demand growth from EVs between 2035 through 2050.”

A Case for New Coal Plants

Previous articles by myself and others have discussed electricity growth and the need to build new coal, nuclear and natural gas power plants. Here are four:

Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Big Beautiful Coal Here for Many More Years. Despite Green Demonization: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/06/17/big-beautiful-coal-here-for-many-more-years-despite-green-demonization/

Joanne Nova on Coal Plant Approvals of the world: https://joannenova.com.au/2025/06/not-dying-global-approvals-of-coal-plants-back-up-to-2015-high/

Coal Power, It is the End Result that Matters! Coal plants provide the lowest cost, most reliable electricity: https://dickstormprobizblog.org/2025/03/28/coal-power-it-is-the-end-result-that-counts/

The Solution to America’s Electricity Generation Crisis: Build New Coal Plants Now! https://dickstormprobizblog.org/2025/04/18/the-solution-to-the-nations-coming-electricity-reliability-crisis-build-new-coal-plants/

The purpose of this essay is to emphasize the importance of using coal fuel and some reasons why I believe this to be true. The long story shortened is this:

Natural gas already dominates electricity generation and the supply-chain of new gas turbines is stretched into four or five year lead times. Another concern that I have is, energy security. Do we really want nearly 50% of our electricity generation fuel to be delivered just in time by pipelines?

Coal plants have the inherent advantage of on-site energy storage of months of fuel. The same for nuclear plants which can literally store years of fuel on site. Nuclear is clean, proven and an outstanding form of power generation.

In reality, we don’t need 50 or a hundred Megawatts of new generation. We need hundreds of thousands of Megawatts of new reliable, 24/7, dispatchable electricity generation. Frankly, if the 102,000 MW of coal plants that were shut down since 2010 were replaced with new ones, it would be a huge step forward! Destroying over 100,000 MW of reliable coal generation without replacing it in kind was wrong and the loss has weakened America. The planned self-inflicted energy crisis continues. Maybe not thanks to President Trump. But here is what was planned before Trump’s EO’s.

The madness of the U.S. Self-Inflicted Clean Energy Crisis continues. According to EIA and other respected news services, the U.S. Utilities plan to shut down more coal plants in the near future.

Massive new nuclear generation can be expected given ten or twenty years to rebuild the supply chain. It took about thirty years, 1956-1986 to build the first 100,000 MW of U.S. nuclear plant generating capacity. Given consistent government policies and regulations, we should be able to do it again.

More Electricity Generation is Needed, Lots More!

The answer? Build new coal plants. Let me go back to the total primary energy flows chart at the top. America runs on about 100 Quadrillion BTUs of thermal energy each year. This has been constant within +/- 10 Quads for over twenty years.

The future, if America is to remain strong, will require more primary energy. Let’s say it will take ten more Quads. Where else can ten Quads of energy be found each year over the next five years? I would like to point out that in 2009 America used 21.8 quads of coal.

In 2024 the coal portion of the total primary energy had dropped to about 8 Quads. Therefore, it is proven that America, given the right policies and investments can produce at least 21.8 quads of coal energy/year. How do I know that, easy, we did it as recent at 2009. The slide below is from my presentation to the ASME Annual meeting in Dallas, 2011.

The world is using more coal than ever. The chart below is from Jo Nova's presentation on her blog.

Conclusions

• Electricity growth is the highest it has been in decades and about 125,000 MW of new Dispatchable electricity generation is needed by 2030 and about 600,000 MW more by 2050

• Gas turbines power about 45% of America’s electricity generation now and it is mostly provided by just-in-time pipeline supply. National security requires more on site energy storage. Long-term energy storage is provided naturally by Coal plants

• Gas turbine additions are limited due to choke points in the supply-chain

• New nuclear plants are also needed. However, building the needed 125,000 MW of new capacity will take decades. It took about 30 years to build the first 100,000 MW of U.S. nuclear generation capacity

• A balanced electricity generation portfolio is preferred for reliability, affordability, and security. The major generation sources of over 70% of the generation should be nuclear, gas and coal power.

• Coal power plants have proven to be the lowest cost producers of electricity in the U.S. Where coal plants have been shutdown, such as CT, MA, CA and Hawaii the electricity costs are the highest in America. Where coal plants continue to operate such as UT, NE, MO, and WV the electricity prices are the lowest

• The coal power infrastructure is still intact. Mines, RR’s etc. and production can be doubled in the short term

• Coal energy storage on site is an advantage for power security

• The U.S. power equipment manufacturing supply chain was capable of producing numerous coal plants as recent as 2013. This supply chain can and should be revitalized

• The rest of the world is increasing coal use for electricity generation. As outlined by Vijay Jayaraj article, GEMS and IEA reports. So, should America be building new coal plants. What other fuel can satisfy the growing demand for primary energy in the near future?

See original post here for full story, references, and sources.

#Electricity #Coal #ClimateChange #Nuclear #NaturalGas #PrimaryEnergy