Good morning. PJM’s capacity auction wraps up today, securing power resources for 2028/2029 delivery. The last auction brought record-high prices (for the third time in a row). We’d say place your bets on whether another record is in store, but this time around, prices are capped at about $325/MW-day. Anyone take the under? 🎲
By the way: Calling all GIS pros. 🗺 Finally…a spatial analysis you can do with a drink in your hand. We’re hosting what we *think* is the first ever pre-Esri User Conference corn hole championship to kick off a week of learning and connecting. We’d love to see you there if you’ll be in San Diego, too.
— Molly, Carrie, and the Energy Central editorial team
Can the grid keep up with rising demand? Register now to explore the role of nuclear energy in the next era of growth.
Pair the AI buildout with President Trump’s gutting of renewable incentives and climate laws and you get…new gas plant capacity on track to nearly triple by 2030, per the EIA.
The jump: In 2025, the Energy Information Administration predicted the US would build 23 GW of new gas plant capacity between 2026 and the end of the decade. The agency has now updated that number to 66 GW.
But: There are still speedbumps, even as gas projects become more appealing to developers. FERC recently rejected a waiver request for a $2B new gas-fired plant in PJM’s fast-tracked review process. The problem? IPP Advanced Power couldn’t get gas turbines quickly enough.
Federal clean energy incentives are (mostly) gone—but “the glass is more than half full,” according to a new report.
A new MIT report modeled the US power sector under two scenarios through 2035: 1) the Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA) and 2) the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. The results paint a surprisingly rosy picture for renewables: More than two-thirds of the clean energy gains and emissions reductions from the original IRA survive attempts to roll them back under the OBBBA.
The details: 74% of new clean energy capacity and 71% of new clean generation remain under the OBBBA. Fossil generation, though, jumps 19% higher—largely from running existing coal and gas plants more.
The big picture: MIT argues the bottleneck to clean energy isn’t necessarily the loss of demand-side subsidies. Instead, it’s the pace of permitting, siting, and interconnection. 🐢 To speed things up and lower costs, we need…you guessed it, permitting reform and more transmission capacity.
Business news roundup: Nuclear and lithium woo investors. 💸
In nuclear news: Holtec International, one of America’s largest nuclear supply companies, could announce its IPO as soon as this week. The company’s ideal outcome? Use the listing (which could come in around $10B) to finance the move from nuclear components and services supplier ➡️ SMR design and plant operator.
And on the battery front: Lilac Solutions is raising north of $350M to develop a commercial plant to pull lithium directly from Utah’s Great Salt Lake. The plant, which would be the first of its kind in the U.S., signals the growing need for critical minerals to fuel battery storage systems and data centers.
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The biggest risk to a utility that has to harden its grid against historical wildfire threats while planning to host the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics over the next two years? Cybersecurity.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation’s largest municipally-owned utility, is playing host to a slew of global events in the coming years—while balancing recovery from January 2025's devastating Palisades wildfire. The top worry as utility resilience needs evolve: cybersecurity.
“What I lose sleep at night about now is cyber attacks,” LADWP Chief Resiliency and Emergency Officer Zoraya Oliver-Griffin told us. “It's not something that you can touch per se.”
The game plan: Oliver-Griffin said she and her team are running a new playbook for grid resilience by coordinating more closely than ever with state and federal partners to ensure any response is a unified one. Get Oliver-Griffin’s blueprint for emergency response, recovery planning, infrastructure hardening, and multi-agency coordination in our full conversation right here.
Across the U.S. power grid, RTOs and their monitors have decided to take congestion and demand matters into their own hands.
MISO’s independent market monitor just dropped six ideas designed to improve power market dynamics. Some of the recommendations: limiting market repricing, adding a capacity replacement marketplace, penalizing emergency resource nonperformance, and more.
PJM stakeholders just greenlit a reliability backstop procurement plan meant to ensure the nation’s largest grid operator has enough power to fuel data centers—and to make up for a supply shortage forecast for 2028. One method: develop new supply close to data centers instead of building new transmission lines to bring in power from far-away fossil fuel plants.
Utility pros: Do you think RTOs and their monitors can make meaningful progress in changing the grid for the better?
Disconnected network data is slowing utilities down. Learn how leading teams unify GIS, connect field to office, and improve speed and accuracy with this practical white paper—tap into the insights here.
Thanks for reading. Same time tomorrow?