Dustyn Thompson is the director of the Delaware chapter of the Sierra Club.
As Delaware families anticipate higher energy bills, misinformation spreads, casting doubt on solutions that could lower costs.
We now know that data centers are a driving force behind recent energy price increases, but that’s only half the story. With over 2,000 megawatts of data center development currently being studied to come online in Delaware, the need for power has never been greater, and Delaware families will pay the price if we fail to act.
Data centers are consuming more power, a trend expected to worsen over the coming years. Where that power comes from now and in the future will have a direct impact not just on your electric bill but also on your gas bill. Unfortunately, some proposed solutions at the regional and state levels are poised to make a bad situation even worse for many Delaware families.
Despite their high demand, clean energy projects, like offshore wind, face repeated attacks. Last year, Sussex County Council opposed a substation for a wind project, prompting the Delaware General Assembly to pass legislation so that much-needed power could connect to the regional grid. The Trump administration has also tried to stop all offshore wind development off the East Coast.
Recently, elected officials from Delaware and Maryland gathered for a public forum on offshore wind. Instead of debating its merits, costs and benefits, the panel delivered a one-sided, rhetoric-driven diatribe against offshore wind. They repeated many points of misinformation.
In response to Donald Trump’s attack on offshore wind projects, PJM recently filed a brief to help the court understand why Dominion Energy’s coastal Virginia offshore wind project matters:
“Dominion’s CVOW project is important to meet a rapidly increasing demand for electric power in PJM’s region. In the past few years, demand has grown at an unprecedented pace — driven largely by new data centers providing the computational power behind artificial intelligence and core digital services. As a result, the need for new power generation has become increasingly urgent in Virginia.” It went on to note, “Given the size of the project and the long lead times associated with development of alternatives, further delay of the project will cause irreparable harm to the 67 million residents of this region that depend on continued reliable delivery of electricity.”
Delaware families share the grid with Virginia and now face a similar crisis, as the project near our coast faces litigation. This project could deliver over 1,000 MW of clean power — enough to power 700,000 homes, which is more than all the homes in Delaware.
Misinformation from local leaders in Maryland and Delaware may lock us into higher energy bills for years.
Instead of prioritizing clean power projects ready for construction, some elected officials are pushing for more natural gas-fired power plants across the region.
Current proposals for this expensive gas build-out fail in two ways. First, due to supply chain issues, building new gas plants will likely take up to seven years for planned plants that don’t already have the necessary components on hand. States across the nation and countries around the world are facing a similar push to expand the data center industry, which, in turn, requires more power plants and their subsequent components.
Second, and most important for Delaware families to understand, is that the gas these power plants use to produce energy comes from the same market as the gas you use to heat your home. At a time when we are exporting more gas than ever in our nation’s history and increasingly relying on the fuel for industrial applications and hydrogen production, doubling down on gas as a primary fuel source for power generation will lead to higher heating costs and higher electricity costs, a one-two punch that Delaware families can’t afford.
We need to be diversifying our energy mix on the East Coast. That means bringing to bear the immense potential of our offshore wind and geothermal resources, while capitalizing on advancements in the storage industry. Adding more eggs to the basket that already holds half of our eggs is not diversifying, and it is not affordable.
To address energy affordability, we must remove roadblocks to offshore wind, reassess our overreliance on costly natural gas and push for clean energy build-out to meet today’s high energy demands.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
