On 7 July 2025, the US Department of Energy released a controversial Resource Adequacy Report, in response to an Executive Order by President Donald Trump aimed at ‘strengthening the reliability and security of the United States electric grid’.  

The report denigrates the role of renewables like wind and solar, while encouraging investment in coal mining and natural gas, to support growing demand from AI data centres and future grid plans.

According to the DoE’s findings: ‘The US grid will not be able to sustain the combined impact of coal and other plant closures, [as] an over-reliance on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, and data centre growth, highlights the urgency of increasing dispatchable energy output.’

In its press release, the DoE claims that its analysis shows: ‘If current retirement schedules and incremental additions remain unchanged, most regions will face unacceptable risks within five years, and the nation’s electrical power grid will be unable to meet expected demand for AI, data centres, manufacturing and industrialisation, while keeping the cost of living low for all Americans.’

Following Trump’s long-standing antipathy towards the Paris Agreement (which he exited on taking office), and the so-called ‘green agenda’ of previous administrations, the DoE report claims to respond to the ‘energy emergency’ that the President declared at the start of the year.

The DoE report says: ‘Generation retirements and delays in adding firm capacity are driven by the radical green agenda of past administrations [Biden in particular], and will lead to a surge in power outages and a growing mismatch between electricity demand and supply… threatening America’s energy security.’

The report states that an additional 100 GW of new peak hour supply is needed by 2030. Of this, 50 GW is directly attributable to new data centres. Furthermore, ‘load growth is accelerating at a rate not seen in decades’.

The potential role of renewables to meet this demand is disputed. The report claims: ‘Intermittent energy sources like wind and solar will not meet reliability demands, and the planned closures of firm, reliable power sources like coal and natural gas are dramatically greater than expected additions.’

The DoE report assumes 104 GW of announced plant closures by 2030 will be met with 210 GW of new generation. However, in its estimates, ‘only 22 GW of that new generation will be firm, reliable, dispatchable generation that is available 24/7’. Accordingly, the report argues that ‘capacity is not being replaced on a one-to-one basis, but will lead to shortfalls during periods of low intermittent renewable power generation’.

Moreover, the report suggests: ‘Modelling shows annual outage hours could increase from single digits today to more than 800 hours per year. Such a surge would leave millions of households and businesses vulnerable.’

Critical dissent

Clean energy groups were fast to complain that the report underestimates the contributions of wind, solar and battery storage resources.  

Caitlin Marquis, Managing Director of Advanced Energy United, told Utility Dive magazine: ‘If the analysis is overly pessimistic about advanced energy technologies and the future of the grid, consumers will end up paying too much for resources we no longer need.’

Nevertheless, presidential appointee US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright insisted: ‘This report affirms what we already know. The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas.’  

Indeed, Trump has always given very vocal support to fossil fuels, with his famous call to ‘Drill, baby, drill’ on election last November. He is also a strong supporter of increased coal mining (despite current trends in the opposite direction, according to the latest Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy). He has also criticised investment in ‘windmills’, while setting big tariffs (over 3,000% at one stage) on solar and battery imports from China.

Even assuming there are no power plant retirements, the DoE model found outage risks in several regions could rise more than 30-fold, ‘proving the queue alone cannot close the dependable-capacity deficit’.

Representing the US coal sector, America’s Power praised the report and said: ‘The analysis is further proof that the premature retirement of coal plants is putting the reliability of the US electricity grid at risk. Baseload power sources like coal are being replaced by less reliable sources like wind and solar.’

To the contrary, clean energy advocates including Marquis said: ‘The DoE report appears to exaggerate the risk of blackouts and undervalue the contributions of entire resource classes, like wind, solar, and battery storage.’ And remarked: ‘It’s troubling that the report was not subject to public input and scrutiny, especially since the Executive Order that mandated it calls for it to be used to identify power plants that should be retained for reliability.’

US environmental group Sierra Club’s Senior Attorney Greg Wannier stated: ‘The methodology is another attempt to push a false narrative that our country’s future depends upon decades-old coal and gas plants rather than clean renewables.’

Moreover, he said that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is ‘already well equipped to meet any projected resource needs through the existing regulatory process, which ensures that electricity demand is reliably met at least public cost’. He also expressed concern that ‘any effort by the DoE to override this process to forcibly keep coal plants online past their planned retirements would be an extraordinary and unlawful overreach of its regulatory authority’.

Christine Powell, Deputy Managing Attorney for environmental group Earthjustice, noted that Congress entrusts FERC to oversee determining the reserve margin and critical resources. She added: ‘DoE’s methodology attempts to usurp that process, and would impose billions of dollars and harmful pollutants on consumers without any corresponding benefits for anyone except for the coal industry.’