Texas Demand Growth Highest in the US, Reading & Podcast Picks, November 23, 2025

Texas demand expected to rise even more than PJM on data center and broader industrial demand; permitting reform bill advances; NERC issues winter reliability assessment; and much more

Reading and Podcast Picks is a collection of what I’ve been reading and listening to over the last week or so about energy topics.

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Texas is winning the energy war by ignoring the politics | Utility Dive

My friend Sean Kelly of Amperon does a great job extolling the virtues of Texas’ all-of-the-above approach. While many of the loudest voices on LinkedIn and Twitter demand fealty to one resource class, Texas continues to benefit from a more pragmatic, market-based approach.

The combination of natural gas, wind, solar and batteries (not to mention nuclear and hydro) keeps the power grid from being overly dependent on any single type of generation. For example, in late July, 5,019 MW of coal-fired generation went offline without causing an emergency.

Diversification creates the flexibility to absorb future disruptions in fuel supply too, and it decentralizes the entire system, making it less vulnerable to the kind of widespread outage that happened with Winter Storm Uri in 2021.

He also notes that his company’s data shows clear benefits from renewable power:

Amperon’s data shows that both day ahead and real time market prices have trended down significantly over the last four years as ERCOT’s solar capacity has increased by more than 200%.

With no fuel costs, solar operates at a low marginal cost, pushing market prices down. Thanks to ERCOT’s competitive market structure, wholesale cost savings make their way not just to investors but also to customers.

Hear, hear.

Power Demand Forecasts Revised Up for Third Year Running, Led by Data Centers | GridStrategies

Grid Strategies analyzed utility reports to FERC and revised the aggregated load growth forecast upward by over 150% since last year.

Over 30% of the projected demand growth of 166 gigawatts is projected to come from Texas. ERCOT is expected to get even more load growth than PJM which covers 14 states and includes the data center hub of Northern Virginia.

Of the 166 GW, over half (~90GW) are from data centers, though Grid Strategies believes based on an aggregation of several alternative forecasts that utilities are overestimating that amount by ~25GW. This reinforces the importance of more “focus on load forecast practices” in ERCOT and other ISO/RTO areas with the highest growth projections.

Grid Strategies forecasts Texas will have an astounding 15% annual growth rate in energy consumption and a 10% annual increase in peak demand. These levels are the highest since at least the 1960s when air conditioning started to scale, enabling a population boom in Texas and across the Sunbelt.

But it’s not just data centers: “Texas is forecast to receive roughly half of U.S. industrial electricity demand growth through 2030. The Texas forecast, from ERCOT, includes about 7 GW of general industrial load growth…”

It all adds up to massive growth coming up…

2025–2026 Winter Reliability Assessment

According to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Texas is at “elevated” risk of outages this winter.