Some sobering facts and a sense of the prevailing thinking can be found (of all places!) in the above New York Times piece. We can't paint the picture any better, so we've curated a collection of compelling quotes from that (lengthy) article:

"Over the past year, electric utilities have nearly doubled their forecasts of how much additional power they'll need by 2028 as they confront an unexpected explosion in the number of data centers, an abrupt resurgence in manufacturing driven by new federal laws, and millions of electric vehicles being plugged in."

"Peak demand in the summer is projected to grow by 38,000 megawatts nationwide in the next five years, according to an analysis by the consulting firm Grid Strategies, which is like adding another California to the grid."

"To meet spiking demand, utilities in states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are proposing to build dozens of power plants over the next 15 years that would burn natural gas."

"Some utilities say they need additional fossil fuel capacity because cleaner alternatives like wind or solar power aren't growing fast enough and can be bogged down by delayed permits and snarled supply chains. While a data center can be built in just one year, it can take five years or longer to connect renewable energy projects to the grid and a decade to build some of the long-distance power lines they require. Utilities also note that data centers and factories need power 24 hours a day, something wind and solar can't do alone."

"The stakes are high. If more power isn't brought online relatively soon, large portions of the country could risk blackouts, according to a recent report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which monitors the health of the nation's electric grids."

"In Northern Virginia, one of the nation's largest data center hubs, at least 75 facilities have opened since 2019 and Dominion Energy, the local utility, says data center capacity could double in just five years."

"In Georgia, where dozens of electric vehicle companies and suppliers are setting up shop, the state's largest utility now expects 16 times as much growth in electricity demand this decade as it did two years ago."

"PJM Interconnection, which oversees the nation's largest regional grid, stretching from Illinois to New Jersey, is now expecting an additional 10,000 megawatts of demand by 2030 that wasn't forecast last year. That's akin to adding another New York City to the system."

"In North Carolina, regulators had ordered Duke Energy, the state's biggest utility, to slash its planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2030. But in January, Duke warned it could miss that target by at least five years under a new plan to build up to five large gas-burning power plants and five smaller versions by 2033, more than previously proposed. Even though Duke is planning a major expansion of solar and offshore wind power, the company says it needs additional gas plants because demand from industrial customers is rising faster than expected. 'The growth we're seeing is historic in scale and speed,' said Kendal Bowman, president of Duke Energy's operations in North Carolina. 'But it's also going to be a challenge, particularly in the near term, to see carbon reduction at the same time we've got this unprecedented growth.'"

On the supply side, we see a similarly challenging set of constraints on adding generating capacity and transmission to fill the gap, including: