Full Title: Identifying Risks in the Energy Industrial Base: Supply Chain Readiness Levels
Author(s): U.S. Department of Energy
Publisher(s): U.S. Department of Energy
Publication Date: January 13, 2025
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Description (excerpt):
The U.S. energy system is entering a period of substantial transformation. Following extended periods of low or no demand growth for electricity, driven by both efficiency increases and a decline in domestic manufacturing, the U.S. is reentering a period of rising electricity demand. Artificial intelligence and data center expansion, reshoring of manufacturing, and the electrification of transportation and industrial processes are all contributing to expected load growth. For example, U.S. data center load growth is projected to double or triple in the next few years, rising from 176 TWh in 2023 to 325-580 TWh in 2028. As a result, overall U.S. electricity demand is projected to grow by 15-20% in the next decade and double by 2050.
Meeting this demand will require historically unprecedented deployment of energy generation capacity – increasing from 1.25 TW of capacity in 2024 to 3.2 TW in 2050 according to National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) models15 – and the expansion and enhancement of aging transmission and distribution infrastructure. While the U.S. has historically benefited from the development of multiple energy resources including fossil fuels, nuclear energy, hydropower, renewables, and others, the bulk of capital investments have historically flowed to fossil fuel power generation. The result is an energy system that still relies on fossil fuels for 84 percent of primary energy end-use and 60 percent of electricity generation as of 2023. Despite this legacy, NREL’s Current Policies Scenario predicts that 96% of future capacity additions between now and 2050 will come from a newer, more economical set of technologies: solar, wind, and batteries.