The recent announcement that Microsoft was helping restart nuclear generation at Three Mile Island has been rightfully celebrated. It signals the importance of nuclear energy for our future. The era of pessimism and unscientific fears of nuclear power are fading.
Not all of what it suggests is positive, however. The major downside is its revelation that it remains easier to reopen a plant than to build a new one from scratch. In this light, the move is more about fixing past mistakes than setting up an energy-abundant future. We should aspire to more. And that means attacking the red tape strangling every energy source.
Microsoft’s atomic move here represents an effort to meet the challenge of rising demand. The electricity world has been in the doldrums of slow to no growth until only a few years ago. Today, the sector’s companies are worried about meeting demands from artificial intelligence and data centers. “Load growth” to use the industry term, is on every utility executive’s mind.
It’s unfortunate that this emphasis on the coming demands for the grid has been one-sided. It has sparked fear without giving a direction for action and response. This is because it has focused on demand projections without considering latent supply.
The AI projections that made waves at the beginning of the year predicted about 35 GW of additional peak demand by 2028. It turns out that the line of would-be generators is even larger — much larger. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s most recent estimates suggest that 2,600 GW of capacity is mired in red tape.
Little of this, however, makes it through the interconnection process and onto the grid. If the past is prelude, then just a bit more than a tenth of that capacity will make it through. That’s still 260 GW and about seven times the 35 GW projected AI demand additions.
This implies that there is no shortage of methods and opportunities to generate power. Instead, we are short on commonsense connection processes. We need to make it easy and quick to connect and sell power.
Here, only Texas shines. The state’s emphasis on an energy-only marketplace simplifies the interconnection process. Because of this, interconnection timelines are growing by years everywhere but the Lone Star state. In fact, timelines have grown to the point where Texas’ grid operators are done in around half the time that others require.
The accolades for Texas continue rolling in. The state’s grid operator connected twice as much power as did a larger electricity grid between 2021 and 2023. Texas, not California, leads the way on large solar installations. The incredibly warm summer saw no emergencies even as AC units chugged away. All of these achievements show a state that has made a swift recovery from the 2021 winter storm and is heading toward a brighter future.
Texas is a model more states and grid operators should emulate. Even Microsoft and Constellation’s nuclear deal is in peril. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a special plea that grid operators fast-track the Three Mile Island project. PJM, the grid operator in Pennsylvania and 12 other states, has not accepted new applications since 2021. Current expectations from Constellation are that the review will begin in 2026 and be completed in 2028.
Harnessing the power of the stars and building the AI technologies of science fiction may have to wait until we finish the paperwork.
No generator should need a governor to ask the gatekeepers of the grid for special treatment. Such events are evidence of a failing system in need of deep reform. Energy is fundamental, and we need steady, sure supplies to encourage industry and innovation. That will only be possible once red tape is removed in permitting and interconnection processes.
Josh T. Smith is the energy policy lead for the Abundance Institute, a nonprofit focused on growing technologies. He writes at Powering Spaceship Earth.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com