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Energy committee hears warning of rapid demand growth, potential capacity shortfalls and funding pause
Summary
At an Energy committee briefing, Mister Nassey said rapid data‑center and AI-driven demand could require about 128 gigawatts of new capacity by 2029, warned that retiring dispatchable plants and slow transmission buildout risk regional shortfalls, and flagged a 90‑day federal review that has paused some IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law disbursements.
Mister Nassey, an EPA lawyer and energy consultant, briefed the Energy committee on an accelerating mismatch between electricity demand and available dispatchable supply, saying the combination of data‑center hyper‑scaling and AI workloads has reversed decades of flat growth.
"Updated filings put that number in the ballpark of 128 gigawatts of capacity growth that will be needed by 2029," Mister Nassey told the committee, citing regional filings and interconnection requests. He said that while renewables and storage are expanding, the grid’s ability to meet longer-duration, weather‑driven peaks depends on dispatchable thermal resources that many models and some recent retirement schedules did not fully account for.
Why it matters: The briefing framed three linked risks — rapidly rising load, thinning dispatchable generation stock, and delays building the long‑distance transmission needed to move new resources into load centers. Nassey said these pressures are most acute in parts of the Midwest and in organized markets such as MISO, where he…
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