U.S. Energy Department Announces Electricity Demand Growth Resource Hub

The U.S. Energy Department has released a resource hub providing a suite of tools to support private and public stakeholders in fulfilling increasing electricity demand, while maintaining grid reliability, security, and affordability. Electricity demand is expected to increase significantly over the next decade driven by the domestic manufacturing sector, growing electrification, the increase in artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and data centers. Energy demand is expected to grow 15-20 percent in the next decade.

The Electricity Demand Growth Hub includes several resources to understand electricity demand growth and available solutions. For example, “2024 Future of Resource Adequacy” offers a range of solutions to manage the growing electricity demand on the U.S. power grid while reducing emissions. “Clean Energy Resources to Meet Data Center Electricity Demand” adds context on the increasing energy needs of data centers during the clean energy transition and highlights the diverse energy technologies and solutions available to meet this rising demand. Further, the hub summarizes the initial milestones of DOE’s voltAIc initiative, which aims to develop AI-powered tools for environmental permitting to accelerate energy deployments.

The department’s Powering AI and Data Center Infrastructure report outlines 16 recommendations to tackle increasing electricity demand in a reliable and affordable way. Furthermore, the report looks in detail at the power dynamics for AI model training, new energy production methods, operational flexibility for data center and utility operators and storage technologies to fulfil load growth.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) underscores that these emerging loads are very large with a short timeline for interconnection. Further, these loads have different performance characteristics from historically large commercial loads and present “nuanced reliability and security challenges,” according to NERC.

The department undertakes regular analysis and research on the above topics and seeks both public and private stakeholder consultation. The department aims to continue engaging with the industry and wider stakeholders, in order to capture the benefits of power demand growth. Through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the department is prepared with policies, tools, financing and assistance programs, and incentives to fulfil the increasing power demand with affordable and clean energy.