Happy New Year! Buckle your seatbelts — it’ll be a wild ride in the energy space in 2025!
What’s in a name? Jennifer Hiller at The Wall Street Journal reports that the renewables industry has gone into “defense mode” preparing for the uncertainty around the new administration. One thing they’re trying – tweaking their talking points. Instead of saying that energy projects are clean and affordable, now companies are talking about how their projects meet American energy needs by lobbying aggressively and pitching their relevance by emphasizing the massive power demands of AI, which could necessitate renewable energy expansion. The piece underscores the industry’s strategic pivot to thrive under a Republican-led administration.
As 2025 begins, European natural gas markets face a significant shift. Russian gas flows via Ukraine have halted following the expiration of a transit deal, pushing gas prices above €50 for the first time in over a year. This development underscores Europe’s ongoing energy security challenges and highlights the urgency of diversifying supply sources and accelerating the energy transition.
One helpful trend for the industry is that after roughly two decades of little to no growth in power demand because of efficiency gains, electricity-usage forecasts have skyrocketed in many states because of the spread of AI, EVs, manufacturing and broader electrification efforts. Utilities compare it with the introduction of air conditioning. That trend has allowed companies to take a page out of the playbook of the oil-and-gas industry, which spent the past four years under the Biden administration using terms such as “addition, not subtraction” to talk about energy sources.
www.wsj.com/...
