Here’s an ugly secret for you – we need every watt of new electricity we can get. If we don’t get it, our electric bills are going to go the way of steak prices. 

And I’m not ready to start yelling about turning off the lights, like my grandpop did in the 1970’s. But that reality could be coming for us in the U.S.

Investment bank analysts expect total U.S. electricity consumption to rise by 20–25% by 2030 (compared to 2023 levels). Data centers, electrification, and industrial growth are driving this fundamental trend.

To offset that new demand, we need supply from every source we can build. It doesn’t matter if it’s solar, wind, tidal, coal, natural gas, or nuclear. If we can use it to make electricity, we should. 

What’s Wrong With Wind and Solar?

The argument against sources like solar and wind is that they aren’t economical, their power is intermittent, and the installations cost too much. 

But that depends on the cost of electricity. The higher the price we pay, the more sense those facilities make. Today, the price of electricity is up 37% from 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). And it appears that the increase is accelerating. 

According to research from the Brookings Institution, many regions in the U.S. reported 25% increases in electricity prices in 2025 alone.

The table below shows data from PJM, a regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

As we can see, electric power prices exploded in 2024 and continue to rise. We should also note the price was effectively flat before that. And historically, that was the case in the U.S.; the cost of electricity was flat for decades. 

That’s changing in a huge way, right now. As you can see from the figure below, we aren’t adding new electric power fast enough to meet rising demand:

That’s a serious problem. Politico reported that companies cut $34 billion in U.S. wind and solar energy projects. 61 projects died in a single year. Since the start of 2025, according to data from Cleanview, an energy analytics platform, companies killed about 2,000 power projects, or 266 gigawatts of new generation capacity in the U.S. That’s a huge problem.

As I mentioned above, the main argument against wind and solar is they’re intermittent. Obviously, you can’t generate solar power at night. The solution to intermittent power is batteries. 

Wrap Up

A new avenue has opened for former electric-vehicle battery makers in the U.S. Giant carmakers Ford, General Motors, and Tesla have all made massive investments in battery manufacturing. Those plants are now retooling from electric vehicle batteries to stationary energy storage. 

This could salvage more than the $133 billion these companies invested in battery plants. 

That’s why we need to dump the power discrimination and embrace all the power plants we can get. And we need to lean into giant batteries or get ready for expensive power.