FACT SHEET: The “Baseload Fallacy”: Undercutting Wind, Solar, and Batteries While Supporting Nuclear and Geothermal Won’t Protect the Grid—Or Families’ Energy Bills

Utility bills are surging across the country in the face of rising demand from data centers and new manufacturing facilities. As noted by major utilities, tech companies, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and CBS News, the reconciliation bill passed by House Republicans in May and under consideration in the Senate would make that crisis worse for families and businesses, raising consumer energy prices by as much as $400 per year over the next decade by repealing job-creating incentives for installing new, clean, affordable electricity generation on the grid.

Now, some Republicans in Congress—and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright—are trying to muddy the waters by claiming that only “non-intermittent,” “baseload power” sources like nuclear and geothermal are important for meeting load growth, and even calling renewable energy resources “parasites” on the grid.

This stance belies a childlike misunderstanding of how the modern electricity grid operates.  Throughout the United States, grid operators have successfully incorporated growing shares of renewable energy resources in ways that enhance rather than undermine grid reliability — indeed, in states like Iowa, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, renewables already account for the bulk of electricity generation for the state. 

Here are the facts:

• Electricity demand is rising. Fast. After years of flat demand, electricity demand is skyrocketing in the United States, driven by investments in AI data centers, manufacturing facilities, and increasing electrification. AI demand alone could double from current levels by the end of the decade, consuming 10 percent or more of U.S. electricity production.

• More than 90 percent of new near-term electricity generation will be renewable. In 2024, the United States added nearly 49 GW of capacity—in both generation and storage—to the grid, the biggest addition in a single year since 2002. 93 percent of that came from wind, solar, and battery storage, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). In 2025, the U.S. is slated to add 63 GW of new generation, with more than 93 percent again coming from renewables.

• Solar, storage, and wind is faster to build than nuclear or geothermal—meaning that near-term demand can only be met by renewables. It can take less than two years to plan and build a solar and storage facility, and less than five years to plan and build a new wind facility. In comparison, geothermal is estimated to take five to 10 years to plan and build, while new nuclear can take 10 to 15 years or longer. Failing to build wind, solar, and storage at scale over the next 5 years puts the U.S. at risk of not being able to meet rising needs for electricity.

• Integrating renewables and modern grid management is improving grid reliability. All 50 states have at least some renewable capacity on the grid, though state and local policies mean that the amount varies widely. However, as renewable installations have risen in recent years, the annual independent assessments from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) have found that summer reliability has improved in all of the nation’s grid regions. Meanwhile, regional grid operators are embracing new innovations that enhance reliability, from battery storage in California helping to smooth out daily transitions from solar to gas generation, to advanced inverters in Hawaii that enable solar panels to provide grid services.

• When the U.S. has experienced severe blackouts, it’s because fossil has failed. In 2021 and 2022, severe winter weather caused widespread power outages in Texas and in the Southeast. In both cases, after-action assessments concluded that the outages were caused by failures in fossil generation, including frozen pipelines and equipment malfunctions. (Awkwardly, even Elon Musk’s Grok AI reached the same conclusion about the Texas blackout in response to Secretary Wright’s inflammatory claims.)

• Natural gas won’t save the day (and Trump’s policies are making it more expensive). Wait times for new natural gas turbines for power plants are seven years or longer, and utility executives have sounded the alarm that the costs of building such plants have also skyrocketed in recent years. That means the U.S. is not likely to see significant increases in new gas generation in the next several years. What’s more, the Trump Administration is going all-in on exporting more liquified natural gas abroad at a rate that outpaces domestic production and therefore is raising prices for U.S. consumers.

The bottom line: More demand + less new clean electricity = higher prices. Electricity rates are already rising faster than inflation for a variety of reasons, including increasing damage from natural disasters and volatile natural gas prices. If Congressional Republicans make it harder and more expensive to build new clean sources of electricity generation (and especially the fastest-to-develop sources like wind, solar, and battery storage) at a time of rapidly rising electricity demand, the only outcome can be higher prices for families and businesses. That’s why multiple studies have concluded that repealing clean energy tax incentives will cost families as much as $400 more per year.

Senate Republicans should resist falling for anti-renewable energy propaganda and maintain support for all forms of clean energy. After all, as former FERC Chair (and former aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)) Neil Chatterjee said recently, “We need every available electron” to meet rising electricity demand.