OPINION:
In the last week of July, power demand in the lower 48 states set two all-time records. Across much of the country, this has been a summer of alarmingly thin margins for our power supply.
On the PJM grid — the nation’s largest, with 67 million customers — operators issued nine emergency alerts through the end of July. Last summer, it was just one. Operators have faced the same challenges on the Midcontinent Independent System Operator grid next door. They have been forced to issue multiple maximum generation alerts, calling on every megawatt of generating capacity to meet demand while needing gigawatts of electricity imports to keep the lights on and air conditioning running.
As this summer has demonstrated, and as recent electricity capacity market results have underscored, the nation urgently needs more dispatchable generating capacity and must keep every megawatt of existing capacity available and operating.
Again and again, during peak power demand in winter and summer months, dispatchable power — coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants — shoulder the burden. Notably, coal capacity has played an outsize role this summer in meeting demand and holding electricity prices in check.
On the MISO grid, coal generation has eclipsed year prior totals for eight straight months. In July, it jumped 17% from a year earlier, meeting rising power demand but also taking market share from higher-priced natural gas and renewable generation, which were waning because of uncooperative weather.
As testament to coal’s importance, look no further than the remarkable case study of the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan. Although it was slated for closure at the end of May because of state regulatory pressure, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright invoked emergency authority to extend the life of the plant to bolster the region’s supply of power.
Although Mr. Wright’s order ensured the plant’s availability this summer, how often it ran and how much power it produced would be totally dependent on need and economics. With data now available for plant operations through June, it’s clear the plant has been a reliability backstop.
The plant’s capacity factor for the month, a measure of its production against its maximum possible output, was 66%, remarkably high. During a brutal heat wave in late June, when power supplies for the region were tightest, the plant surged more than a gigawatt of capacity onto the grid. For comparison, the entire 30 GWs of wind capacity on the MISO grid has at times produced little more.
The Trump administration has taken a deeply welcome and pragmatic approach to the coal fleet. Rather than a problem that must be solved, the Trump administration has embraced the fleet as an answer to the nation’s startling grid reliability challenge, now compounded by the emergence of soaring electricity demand.
A leading consultancy expects U.S. power demand to jump an incredible 25% by 2030 and nearly 80% by 2050, driven by electrification and the artificial intelligence revolution. In regions where data center development is most concentrated, demand will jump even higher and faster.
Although building generating capacity and the infrastructure needed to support it, both transmission lines and pipelines, will be essential, meeting so much new demand so fast will require getting more power from the capacity we already have.
If the U.S. is to seize the AI moment and ensure this technology is developed under American safeguards, electricity availability is key.
The coal fleet is uniquely positioned to meet the moment.
Although nuclear power plants already run at full capacity and gas plants are constrained by pipeline availability and gas heating demand during winter months, the coal fleet has the spare capacity and fuel security to ramp up generation to fill much of the gulf emerging between available power supply and projected demand.
The U.S. has the needed generating capacity to win the AI race. We must now embrace the coal solution hiding in plain sight.
• Rich Nolan is president and CEO of the National Mining Association.
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