US power use forecast to reach record highs in 2024 and 2025, EIA says

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Reuters

October 8, 2024 12:43 PM EDT Updated an hour ago


Oct 8 (Reuters) - U.S. power consumption will rise to record highs in 2024 and 2025, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO) on Tuesday. EIA projected power demand will rise to 4,093 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2024 and 4,163 billion kWh in 2025. That compares with 4,000 billion kWh in 2023 and a record 4,067 billion kWh in 2022.

With growing demand from artificial intelligence and data centers and as homes and businesses use more electricity for heat and transportation, EIA forecast 2024 power sales would rise to 1,503 billion kWh for residential consumers, 1,412 billion kWh for commercial customers and 1,033 billion kWh for industrial customers.

That compares with all-time highs of 1,509 billion kWh for residential consumers in 2022, 1,391 billion kWh in 2022 for commercial customers and 1,064 billion kWh in 2000 for industrial customers.

EIA said natural gas' share of power generation would hold at 42% in 2024, the same as 2023, before sliding to 39% in 2025. Coal's share will ease from 17% in 2023 to 16% in 2024 and 2025 as renewable output rises. The percentage of renewable generation will rise from 21% in 2023 to 23% in 2024 and 25% in 2025, while nuclear power's share will hold at 19% in 2024 and 2025, the same as 2023.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-power-use-forecast-reach-record-highs-2024-2025-eia-says-2024-10-08/

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Link to EIA STEO page - https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/

[jimfields33]

1. Not shocking as everything is converting over to

Electric. Heck even lawn maintenance materials are being used by electricity more often. Add cars, appliances from gas to electricity (eventually), we’re going to increase our electric consumption by a lot.

[Miguelito Loveless]

4. Indeed,

Converted my lawn equipment to electric years ago. Less maintenance, quieter operation.

[The Wizard]

2. Where is fossil fuel consumption

in the equation?

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. We need to deploy

green generation on scale with what China is doing. Hell, even the UK which just closed its last coal-fired plant last week.

[former9thward]

6. China is building coal fired generation plants like crazy.

China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds

China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin

[Miguelito Loveless]

10. True

But that doesn't change fact that they put us to shame on green energy deployment.

[3825-87867]

3. AI?

Some of these "mines" use more power than small towns. Guess who will be paying for big business's AI investment...in more than one way!

[Ford_Prefect]

7. Conveniently scrubbed from the report is the estimate of how much Crypto is and will be consuming. It's on the same

sort of scale as AI, and the end users aren't being correctly billed for it, so every day consumers (that's you and me) are paying increased rates for consumption and new generation plants.

All to support what is essentially a Ponzi scheme.

[Batshit_Bruin_CA]

8. Yes, I had wondered about the potential Ponzi scheme aspect of Crypto,

But assumed that I just lacked any relevant expertise in that area. Descriptions of crypto 'mining' sounds like it uses enormous amounts of computational energy and time to solve some specialized type of algorithm. But the algorithm doesn't produce anything remotely useful, aside from its own uniqueness.

If anyone has a more accurate description, that would be helpful. I am pretty sure I have merely displayed my ignorance.

But the main point of the OP is that Crypto uses enormous amounts of energy. Then the servers and server rooms need to be well air-conditioned, sucking up even more energy.

[Ford_Prefect]

9. The only monetary value crypto has is the millions in cash people have essentially "bet" on it, rather like the NFT's

and Trump Media shares TFG claims have value.

The actual cost of generating the unique number that Crypto claims to value is not paid for by anyone involved in computing it. They don't own the software nor the servers, and the if the power is paid for at all it is far below the rate it should be.

The whole thing got started as a distributed computing task spread over thousands of individual users. It evolved into a way to dodge taxation, along with financial regulation. It now powers significant political donations to both GOP and Democratic Presidential, Congressional, Senate and state legislative candidates.