Figure 2 shows electricity outputs in GWh in 2023: wind (425,000) and solar grid power (165,000) essentially at record highs, although these lie far below power from natural gas (1,802,000) and nuclear (775,000) and coal (675,000). Renewables still have a lot to catch up.

But the U.S. looks to have an electricity crisis (see below) and needs to decide in policy where extra power will come from: fossil or renewables.

A Climate Emergency Doesn’t Exist in the U.S. 

But this requires definition. There are direct indicators of climate change that include heat waves, Arctic and Antarctic ice melting, glaciers retreating, sea levels rising, and corals bleaching. These have been serious, but not generally associated with human lives lost (cold kills a lot more people than heat waves), destroyed infrastructure, famines, mass migrations, or government collapse.

Each of these direct indicators has worsened globally in the last 50 years, and long-term data have proven this. For example, coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia has reached an all-time high.

But there also exist indirect indicators of climate change, such as the so-called four killer weather extremes of droughts, wildfires, flooding, and hurricanes. These are often short- or long-term catastrophes that have major effects on human lives: famines, migration, and stability of governments.

On a global basis, none of these four killer weather extremes have worsened over the past 40-50 years — even though global temperature has risen by 1.0 C degrees in this period. Why then should we be worried about the next 0.3C rise in global warming that will reach the danger level of 1.5C above preindustrial times, as designated by the Paris Agreement of 2015? The data are telling us climate change is a crisis but it’s not existential.

Last, the oil and gas industry is not worsening the killer quad of weather extremes, even though the companies now produce around 50% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The industry may be held culpable for direct indicators of global warming, but not for these indirect killer extremes.

A New Crisis: Electricity

What’s behind Trump’s energy emergency? The best bet is an electricity crisis related to a flurry of data centers that drive AI. Big-tech names like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook already deal with huge volumes of data and this will be multiplied many times over to incorporate all aspects of AI. One data center uses 10,000 times more electricity than a typical household.

In support of this, new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin, Feb. 4, 2025, vowed to make the US the “artificial intelligence capital of the world”. 

There are projections for different growth scenarios in U.S. data centers. A moderate growth rate of 5% per annum would lead to data centers consuming 5% of total electrical power by 2030. A high growth rate of 10% per annum would lead to 6.8% of total consumption by 2030.

But is this a crisis or an emergency? If electricity may run out in the future, that’s a crisis. But if there are blackouts now, that’s an emergency. Here is the view of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. in a recent 10-Year Outlook:

• Summer demand will increase by 122 GW in the next 10 years, boosting system peaks by almost 16%.
• Half of North America will face electricity shortfalls in the next 5-10 years due to data centers and electrification of vehicles and buildings, plus retirement of coal-fired power plants.
• Federal policies are needed to support electricity production, manufacturing, and infrastructure. The reliability of our electrical grid system is becoming precarious.

The Trump Solution

The Department of Energy (DOE) will focus its R&D budget on “fossil fuels, advanced nuclear, geothermal, and hydropower,” DOE chief Chris Wright said. Solar and wind renewables are not on the list, perhaps because they are not “dispatchable”. Sadly, this position appears to dismiss a new report that showed that global solar PV capacity has shot up like a rocket in the past few years, and that IEA has grossly underestimated this since 2010. The coming golden age of grid batteries also makes wind and solar dispatchable, as South Australia has demonstrated. Why solar PV is not on the DOE list is very hard to understand.

In the same DOE report, New Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin, in early February, vowed to make the U.S. the “artificial intelligence capital of the world”. 

The new administration has halted offshore leasing in U.S. federal waters for wind projects that produce electricity. Admittedly, they are relatively expensive, and have incurred business partner struggles. On the other hand, offshore wind provides crossover experience and jobs for workers in the oil and gas industry, which is earmarked for expansion by the Trump government.

Nuclear electricity.

The U.S. produces more nuclear energy than any other country, but nuclear carries baggage. There was the dramatic failure at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. Overseas, the collapse of the Chernobyl Russian nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986, and more recently Fukushima in Japan in 2011, remind us of the deadly effects of radiation dispersal through air and water. Disposal of nuclear waste is an everlasting concern, and a leak in one drum at the WIPP storage site in New Mexico cost $600-700 million and took three years to repair.

But in the U.S. there is some interest at the state level. Texas plans to build a nuclear “proving ground” at Bryan, with new reactors to be built by four companies within five years. Utah also worries that electricity demand outweighs their in-state production. Citing Texas, the state has set up an energy council to create energy development zones, and a nuclear energy consortium that will perhaps evaluate the viability of building a cluster of nuclear reactors.

Surprisingly, Utah seems to have forgotten their previous experience with a small modular reactor (SMR). Just a year or two ago, an SMR was ordered to provide electricity for a municipality in Utah. But the prolonged permitting process by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) helped force the purchase cost so high that the deal was canceled. Let’s be clear: the costs of nuclear, including SMRs, have been evaluated, and found to be non-competitive with wind, solar and battery systems.

Despite these concerns, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has put out an optimistic new report on nuclear power around the world. The report says, “However, nuclear energy is making a strong comeback, with rising investment, new technology advances and supportive policies in over 40 countries.” Cautionary note: a new report showed that IEA has overestimated the nuclear generation of electricity every year since 2010. It’s very hard to understand DOE preferring nuclear electricity over solar PV renewables, especially when solar PV has taken off like a rocket and all indications are that nuclear will be significantly more expensive.  

Finally, for generating electricity we can expect the Trump administration to prefer geothermal projects over wind, solar, and battery renewables. Fervo Energy’s EGS project called Project Red has provided electricity for over a year to a Nevada utility as well as to Google data centers. The twin-well technique is taken from the technology that drove the success of the shale oil and gas revolution.

An additional benefit of the Fervo system is the reservoir can be used to store the geothermal energy by shutting in the production well while maintaining flow in the injection well. When demand increases, the production well can be opened up to boost electrical output, such as in early evenings when homes turn on extra power.