President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to cut energy prices in half just got even more unrealistic. Electricity costs are careening toward a 30-year high, writes Brian Dabbs. Ballooning demand from power-hungry data centers is driving the trend, according to a new report from the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. Power customers are feeling the sting. And rates may only continue to grow, said David Michael Tinsley, senior economist at Bank of America Institute If other strains hit the economy, such as restricted job growth, “consumers may increasingly feel the need to ease back on discretionary spending to keep the lights (and the heat) on,” Tinsley wrote in a research note. How electricity is priced depends on a number of region-specific factors, but generally speaking, the solution is to add more power to the nation’s electric grid to bring prices down. That’s a lot easier said than done. For Trump and Republican lawmakers, who are working to undo U.S. clean energy policy, the answer lies in making it easier to produce and transport fossil fuels, mainly natural gas. Trump has pledged to open up more federal lands for oil and natural gas drilling, and GOP lawmakers are gunning to repeal the penalties that gas producers are required to pay for atmospheric pollution. But some analysts say it might be cheaper and easier to continue ramping up solar, wind and battery capacity. Michelle Solomon with the research firm Energy Innovation said clean power accounted for more than 90 percent of new resources added to the grid last year. And a lot more of it is waiting in line to connect. “That means those wind, solar and battery projects are kind of in various stages of development, whereas with a gas project, you’re going to have to be starting from scratch,” Solomon said. Plus, state and local opposition to pipeline development is a major problem for gas producers. “It seems like the Trump administration is trying to put its thumb on the scales for certain resources over others versus letting the market dictate which resources are the cheapest,” Solomon said.
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