Ken Silverstein: Electricity prices rising, but solution stalled (Opinion)
Ken Silverstein
Electricity is taking a bigger bite out of disposable household income, now at 3% to 4%. ICF Corp. predicts electricity demand to climb 25% by 2030, pushing residential prices up by 15% to 40%, depending on the region. Why is that?
Artificial intelligence and data centers are driving a structural surge in round-the-clock power consumption. Utilities that once planned for flat demand are now scrambling to build generation. If electric rates are to stay in check, new supply must come online quickly.
The fastest path? Build wind and solar facilities, supported by battery storage. It’s not about ideology; it’s about math. In this environment, speed to market equates to affordability.
Solar accounts for 60% of projects awaiting permission to be built and connected to the grid. Wind and solar together have provided more than half of new capacity additions over the past decade — a reflection of market economics, not political messaging.
By contrast, new combined-cycle natural gas plants can take four to six years from approval to operation. Nuclear projects take longer. New coal facilities are largely off the table.
In that context, policy choices matter.
Affordability is the name of the game
If affordability is the political north star — and voters consistently say it is — then federal energy policy would logically accelerate the development of the resources that can be built fastest. Instead, the current posture toward wind and solar from Washington has introduced uncertainty at precisely the wrong moment.
Industry leaders have adjusted their pitch accordingly. Climate language has faded from the foreground. As Heather O’Neill, the CEO of Advanced Energy United, put it at a recent solar and battery conference in San Diego, “It’s really about our technologies being a set of solutions around affordability, reliability and resilience.”
That’s not retreat. It’s realism.
The debate today isn’t primarily about emissions. It’s about keeping electricity prices stable as demand climbs. Wind and solar happen to play a central role in that equation, despite the climate contributions being discounted by partisan messaging.
Administrative actions that slow permitting — including a moratorium affecting 78 gigawatts of wind and solar projects — effectively constrain supply during a surge in demand. Basic economics suggests that limiting supply while demand rises is a risky strategy if the goal is lower consumer bills.
Critics argue that rising demand requires predictable “baseload” sources such as coal. That view deserves consideration. Data centers require continuous reliability. Intermittency is a legitimate operational concern.
Much of the nation’s coal fleet is more than four decades old. Maintenance costs are rising. Environmental retrofits are capital-intensive. Keeping these plants online is expensive, hardly synonymous with affordability. Natural gas, which now makes up 40% of the nation’s electricity mix, remains subject to commodity price volatility.
That is where storage enters the discussion. Think of it as a large-scale battery — similar in concept to the portable charger used to power a phone in an emergency. Storage does not eliminate cost; it requires upfront capital investment. It can be dispatched on demand, storing excess power from wind and solar and releasing it during peak hours to prevent price spikes. Lithium-ion systems typically provide about four hours of energy, while emerging long-duration technologies can extend eight hours or more, potentially days. Many estimates project that costs could fall by nearly 50% this decade.
The energy conversation has evolved. What was once framed primarily as a climate imperative is now presented as an economic one — not because emissions no longer matter but because supply constraints matter more immediately.
If electricity demand continues to climb — and AI suggests it will — the central question becomes unavoidable: which resources can scale fast enough to prevent price escalation?
This is less a debate about doctrine than about timing. Slowing the fastest deployable sources of new power while waiting years for alternatives to materialize may prove costly. Markets punish supply bottlenecks. Consumers feel the subsequent pain.
When demand is rising, slowing the most immediate sources of new electric power isn’t about agenda — it’s about arithmetic, taking a toll on pocketbooks.
Ken Silverstein has covered energy and international affairs for years. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
