Electricity demand expected to jump by more than 75% by 2050, report says

U.S. location electrical bills could scope caller precocious

U.S. location electrical bills could scope caller precocious this summer 03:40

A melodramatic request for electricity, coupled with a emergence successful costs, could make monolithic vigor challenges for the United States implicit the adjacent 2 decades, a caller report released Tuesday by ICF found.

The planetary consulting and exertion services institution predicted that energy request could leap astatine slightest 25% successful the adjacent 5 years and arsenic overmuch arsenic 78% by 2050 — findings that acold outpace humanities trends implicit the past 2 decades. Such maturation could person a important interaction connected some the reliability and affordability of electricity, the study said. Retail costs are besides expected to rise; by 2050, costs passed onto the user could double, ICF found. 

"This is simply a pivotal infinitesimal arsenic rising request creates urgent challenges for the grid," said Anne Choate, ICF enforcement vice president for energy, situation and infrastructure successful a statement.

The U.S. could conflict with accrued energy request owed to rising temperatures and the increasing usage of emerging technologies, bearing down connected an overloaded system. The study recovered that successful Texas, astir one-third of the expected summation is attributable to ample load sources, specified arsenic cryptocurrency mining operations. Data centers, gathering electrification and semiconductor manufacturing, on with electrical vehicles, relationship for 35% of the projected load done 2040 successful 13 mid-Atlantic and Midwest states arsenic good arsenic Washington, D.C.

Electric grid operators crossed the U.S. person been sounding the alarm successful beforehand of elevated summertime temperatures aft record-breaking vigor past year. The World Meteorological Organization said successful its annual State of the Global Climate report that 2024 acceptable a caller global temperature record, averaging implicit 1.5 degrees Celsius supra pre-industrial levels. The National Weather Service released a study past week predicting hotter-than-normal temperatures crossed the United States from June done August. 

PJM, 1 of the country's largest electrical grid operators, serving 67 cardinal radical successful states including North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan, warned customers in a quality release that the strategy volition beryllium acquisition a precocious highest request this summer.

"This outlook astatine a grounds highest vigor script reflects our years-long and mounting concerns arsenic we program for capable resources to support grid reliability," said Aftab Khan, PJM's enforcement vice president of Operations, Planning & Security, successful a statement. The relation stressed it had capable resources to respond to the request and said it is readying for antithetic scenarios and volition respond to them to "protect the energy supply."

Electricity costs are besides expected to emergence and outpace inflation, with experts predicting a leap of 6% successful 2025 — an mean of $784 per household for the summertime period. That would people a 12-year record, according to a new analysis from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Households are not lone expected to person to wage higher prices for electricity, they volition apt devour much of it than they did past summertime due to the fact that of the request for much cooling.

NEADA Executive Director Mark Wolfe told CBS News' MoneyWatch, "when energy prices spell up, they thin to enactment high. "

In:
• Electricity
• New Jersey
• Texas

Megan Cerullo contributed to this report.