The energy transition crossroads of reliability and sustainability now has a major traffic jam years in the making and years from fixing.

Utility-scale power generation capacity is losing ground to meet demand from the rising forces of data center growth, electric vehicles, industrial electrification and onshoring of manufacturing.

Sometimes all good things may work out in the end, but getting there will take some deep thinking and huge commitment of resources.

Many issues are coming to a head fast, but the first challenge mentioned here may be the deepest and most immediate. The data center industry’s runaway growth is necessitating the need for at least another 21 GW of energy to match construction of facilities coming online. Research by financial firm Goldman Sachs predicts that new load could be closer to 47 GW by 2030.

This is a critically big number. One GW (1,000 MW) is comparable to the average size of a conventional nuclear power plant. The commissioning of Georgia Power’s new reactors Vogtle 3 and 4 notwithstanding, the American grid power generation industry is not building 47 new utility-scale nuclear plants anytime soon, if ever.