NERC: Half of America At A High Risk of Blackouts

TL;DR: Hold on to your butts

Last Friday, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released its 2026 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA).

The map below says it all.

Nearly half of the American population will be at a high risk of rolling blackouts in the near future due to rising electricity demand, the announced retirement of reliable coal plants, and a continuing shift toward the unreliable wind, solar, and battery storage systems that failed to deliver during Winter Storm Fern.

The LTRA’s Executive Summary minces no words:

The overall resource adequacy outlook for the North American BPS is worsening: In the 2025 LTRA, NERC finds that 13 of 23 assessment areas face resource adequacy challenges over the next 10 years. Projections for resource and transmission growth lag what is needed to support new data centers and other large loads that drive escalating demand forecasts. Most new resources in development to come on-line in the next five years consist of battery storage and solar photovoltaic (PV), which are inverter-based and weather-dependent resources that increase the complexity of planning and operating a reliable grid. Meanwhile, more fossil-fired generator retirements loom in the next five years, reducing the amount of generation that has fuel on site and impacting the system’s ability to respond to spikes in demand. The continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources and less fuel diversity increases risks of supply shortfalls during winter months [emphasis added].

To ensure there are sufficient resources for supplying electricity in the future and to reliably meet the growing electricity needs for North Americans, industry, regulators, and policymakers need to be vigilant for shifting projections, keep plans for deactivating existing generators flexible, expedite system development, and perform robust adequacy assessments of future scenarios [emphasis added].

As a result, many regions of the country face an elevated risk of blackouts in 2026 and 2026, and a high risk from 2028-20230. The table below shows each region and its risk level by year, as well as a summary of the factors driving those risks.

In a nutshell, high-risk areas are seeing rapid demand growth, coal retirements, and insufficient replacement capacity consisting largely of wind, solar, and storage, which do not offer the same reliability benefits as thermal resources.

Here are some interesting insights from the LTRA report.

In Demand Data Centers

According to the LTRA, data centers and other demand drivers will increase the peak electricity demand on the power grid by 224 gigawatts (GW), or 29 percent, in the summer and 245 GW, or 35 percent, in the winter over the next decade.

The LTRA included a fascinating map that identified the drivers of load growth across regions of the United States. You’ll notice that data centers are major factors in nearly every region of America except California, New York, New England, SERC East, SERC West, and SERC FP (Florida).

In the Northeast, vehicle electrification and heat pumps are assumed to drive load growth, but we are deeply skeptical that this projected demand for power will materialize. High energy bills are already undermining public support for measures like Mass Saves, which charges natural gas customers an additional fee to subsidize heat pumps, and electric vehicle sales have plummeted in the wake of the expiration of federal subsidies. Not to mention, similar to data centers, it remains to be seen whether these regions will even be able to take on the increased demand stemming from electrification efforts.

Regardless of whether heat pump and EV demand increases are oversold, demographic changes, rising industrial demand, and data centers present a massive challenge to grid reliability in the 10-year period examined by NERC.

Delaying Retirement

Meeting the projected demand growth in the years to come would be exceedingly difficult under any circumstances. However, it will be infinitely harder if we continue to prematurely retire existing reliable power plants, like the coal plants that increased their output by 31 percent during Winter Storm Fern compared to the previous week to keep the lights on.

According to the report, as much as 105 GW of fossil and nuclear capacity could go offline by 2035. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), unfortunately, continues to lead the pack in projected retiring capacity at roughly 35 GW, shown in the bottom figure—all of it labeled as “confirmed” retirements.

With this in mind, it’s no wonder that MISO is projected to have the lowest reserve margin among the summer-peaking systems of just 4.3 percent by 2030, and that it shows a 7 GW shortfall of capacity by the winter of 2028.

If the first rule of holes is to stop digging, the first rule of electric grid reliability is to stop shutting down reliable power plants, including those powered by coal.

NERC urges state policymakers and utilities to “keep plans for deactivating existing generators flexible,” a polite way of asking them to stop making it harder to keep the lights on. This is something we have been advocating for years, and it is good to see NERC is inching its way toward screaming it from the rooftops.

NERC went on to highlight how some backtracking on plant retirements has already taken place, and that it is due to the reliability risks posed by shutting them down.

Projected retirements overall, both confirmed and unconfirmed, have shrunk from the prior year’s LTRA as reliability needs have expanded with the continued growth in anticipated large-load interconnections. The initiation of market mechanisms like capacity accreditation has also more precisely highlighted the loss-of-load risks posed by a generation mix that has increasing amounts of variable resources. Growing demand and evolving planning methodologies have highlighted the potential need to keep resources, particularly non-variable resources, on-line longer than previously anticipated.

Building Stuff That Doesn’t Work Will End Badly

Lastly, NERC warns that “The continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources [i.e., wind, solar, and battery storage] and less fuel diversity [as coal plants retire] increases risks of supply shortfalls during winter months.”

New battery and solar represent around 66 percent of the capacity additions of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 resources in the study period. Natural-gas-fired generator additions represent 15 percent of the projected capacity additions, followed by wind and hybrid at 8 percent each.

We can’t keep trying to replace dispatchable power with intermittent resources and expect to keep the lights on. Thankfully, the Trump administration has taken aggressive action to shore up grid reliability and keep costs as low as possible.

Much of the blackout projections for high-risk areas in the LTRA report, like the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, are based on policy-driven coal generator retirements, as these reliable, affordable power plants were under attack from the Biden EPA, and many remain in jeopardy due to state climate mandates.

For example, in 2024, the Biden administration finalized EPA regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that would have effectively killed off the remaining coal plants and made it much more difficult to invest in the new natural gas facilities we desperately need. These regulations are now being rescinded, and as a result, utilities have no excuse to endanger the grid or worsen the affordability crisis already grabbing headlines by retiring their coal or natural gas facilities.

In states with carbon-free electricity mandates, such as Colorado, Michigan, and Washington, the Trump administration is issuing emergency orders to keep existing coal plants running. While these orders have been criticized by climate groups, keeping the plants online provided vital capacity during last week’s cold snap, when highly subsidized wind and solar facilities decided not to show up for work.

Conclusion

If only tax dollars could make the wind blow or the sun shine.

Alas, last week’s wind and solar failure highlights the fact that America’s energy policy has had the exact wrong priorities for decades, dishing out lavish subsidies for unreliable wind and solar generators — a bipartisan problem — and shuttering reliable nuclear and coal-fired power plants.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act has begun to correct for this malinvestment in the energy sector by accelerating the phaseout of wind and solar subsidies — although Congress should have ended them immediately — sending a signal to the power industry that its capital is better invested in the reliable, dispatchable resources needed to meet the rising demand laid out by NERC.

Fixing what ails the grid will require states and utilities to first do no harm by shutting down reliable power generators, but it will also require Congress to understand that you can’t fix a reliability crisis by subsidizing unreliable resources.

NERC’s analysis is a clear warning that dimwitted policy will leave us all in the dark. Hopefully, it’s not during another winter storm.

This piece is a modification of an article published this week in the National Review.

AOER In the News: It’s been a big week for the Always On Energy Team in the media, so we’re going to do a little bragging instead of having a “what we’re reading” section this week.

• On Monday, Sarah Montalbano was in Town Hall with an article on the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Long Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA).

• On Wednesday, Isaac was quoted in E&E News, criticizing an offshore wind propaganda piece by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

• On Thursday, Mitch and Isaac were in the National Review, also on the LTRA.

• On Friday, Isaac and Jonathan Lesser talked electricity affordability in RealClearPolitics.