Energy Demand meets Clean Energy Solutions

The NERC just released a piece, warning that North America may experience electricity outages as early as 2024 due to a low supply of electricity. Here's everything you need to know:

👉 With the highest-ever demand for electricity from our technology needs, the NERC is projecting 300 million people can be affected by electricity shortages from 2024 to 2028. This comes from the earths ever increasing need for power. As we innovate, energy becomes more and more important.

👉 Aside from energy demands increasing, the US also plans to eliminate 83 GW of fossil fuel-sourced energy for climate change purposes. In other words, as regulation and sustainability groups strive to eliminate emissions, it is in turn depleting the overall energy supply. In a perfect world, the globe can live on clean energy, but that just isn't sustainable in the near term. With 4,048 billion kWh of energy consumed in 2022 according to the EIA, only 40% of that came from clean energy. Thus it is evident that we need to find a realistic balance to serving our energy needs, while staying on track to meeting our climate goals.

👉 The good news to such surges in electricity, homes will have sufficient energy almost in any condition. The bad news is shortages only will occur while energy demand is highest, which concerningly is during the winter when we all need our power to stay warm. As explained by the NERC, only particular regions are at risk, so that will be a big driver in state regulation to not over commit to clean energy and decommit to fossil fuel energy just yet.

Something to look out for as the US continues its transition to cleaner energies, and aims to sustain the ever-demanding electricity grid.

Sources:
1) https://www.powersystems.technology/services.html
2) https://www.utilitydive.com/news/generator-retirements-threaten-grid-reliability-NERC/702504/
3) https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-power-use-slide-2023-slower-economic-growth-2023-07-11/#:~:text=EIA%20projected%20that%20power%20demand%20will%20slide%20from,kWh%20in%202024%20as%20economic%20growth%20ramps%20up.
4) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/us-electricity-energy-carbon-renewables/#:~:text=Power%20capacity%20from%20clean%20energy%20sources%20comprised%20a,not%20renewable%2C%20but%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20produce%20greenhouse%20gas%20emissions.