"Today was the first time in history that the energy demand in Texas hit 80 Gigawatts, that’s an all-time high. The anticipated power demand in the next 5 years in Texas is 150 Gigawatts; are we going to build a nuclear plant in Texas in the next 5 years? No. Can we rely on wind and solar? No. Almost by default, the answer is natural gas."
At PRAGMA’s New York Launch Party last month, Ben West sat down with PRAGMA Advocacy Committee member Dan Romito of Pickering Energy Partners for PRAGMA’s latest podcast.
They spoke about what the energy industry needs to do to create “FOMO” and get capital flowing back to the space again; we talked about the need to discuss water, power, and transmission simultaneously in the context of meeting significant energy demand as a result of generative AI; and Dan shared data to support the findings in his recent report “American Coal Is Cleaner Than Chinese Solar”, shedding light on how the global supply chain for wind & solar is almost entirely reliant on China and access to cheap coal and highlights how reliance on China for energy can lead to a rise in global emissions when compared with a strategy that incentivises domestically produced energy and prioritises natural gas, nuclear and other low carbon energy supplies.
