A report by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) has warned of a rise in risks of blackouts in the U.S. According to the report, Americans could face 800 hours of blackouts by 2030 amid an expected rise in demand brought by AI.
“In the coming years, America’s reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power,” Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. “President Trump’s administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure,” he added.
“If we are going to keep the lights on, win the AI race, and keep electricity prices from skyrocketing, the United States must unleash American energy.”
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The DOE also said that its past peak-hour tests to evaluate the adequacy of energy resources “do not sufficiently account for growing dependence on neighboring grids.” It also added that “modern methods of evaluating resource adequacy need to incorporate frequency, magnitude, and duration of power outages, move beyond exclusively analyzing peak load time periods, and develop integrated models to enable proper analysis of increasing reliance on neighboring grids.”
This report was produced in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Strengthening the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid.”
The report also places blame on the closure of coal and natural gas power plants and the over-reliance on renewable energy. It backs President Trump’s pro-coal, anti-renewable stance which painted wind and solar energy as unreliable and part of a “radical green agenda of past administrations.”
This also comes as the Energy Department has been using emergency authority to extend the life of coal and other plants, citing concerns about shortages of electricity as data centers — which power artificial intelligence (AI) models — require more supply.
The department also noted that this analysis can be used to invoke the use of emergency authority in the Federal Power Act to order coal and natural gas plants to keep operating. The administration has already used this to prevent two plants from being retired. Officials had also considered using this authority to help struggling coal plants during Trump’s first term.
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This also comes shortly after the passing of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which among other things, ended long-standing federal support for solar and wind power, while creating a friendly environment for oil, gas and coal production. Trump stated that the U.S. will rely on “oil, gas, coal and nuclear to meet its growing energy needs.”
Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Bloomberg, “it’s ironic that the Energy Department is warning about reliability just days after Republicans in Congress repealed the clean energy tax credits. More clean energy will make the U.S. grid stronger, more reliable and more resilient — all while saving consumers money on their electricity bills. Bailing out old, dirty fossil-fuel plants would mean higher costs and a less reliable grid.”
Another group, Earth Justice, said the Department of Energy report “systematically undercounts the contributions of clean energy.”
According to the Energy Department around 100 nuclear reactors are set to retire by 2030 which could lead “to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation.”