NERC recently issued a Level 3 Alert, its highest severity level ever, over the risk data center demand poses to America's power grid. It's only the third one ever issued. The numbers behind it: ▪️Dispatchable generation, the power operators can call on when needed, has fallen from 99% of capacity in 2000 to roughly 76% today ▪️More than half the nation's regional grids already have compromised reliability ▪️In July, a 3 GW disconnection near a Virginia data center cluster took operators 10 minutes to resolve ▪️That same month, DOE issued emergency orders just to keep the lights on in DC during a heat wave ▪️NERC's own required fixes may not be complete until 2028 or later. For an emergency alert, that timeline doesn't add up. Our new issue brief, Reliability in the Crosshairs, by NCEA Visiting Fellow Thomas Burgess, a former NERC director of reliability assessment, breaks down how decades of grid decisions collided with a demand surge, and why the fixes underway may already be too slow. 🔗energyanalytics.org/research…

Has the world grown complacent about energy security? Senior Fellow @NeilAtkinson58 believes it has, and that the war in the Middle East has made the cost of that complacency clear. In the latest Energy Future Now, Atkinson joins RealClear's Maggie Miller to examine how the conflict is reshaping global energy investment. Beyond gasoline prices, the war has exposed vulnerabilities across the entire oil product complex, including diesel, the workhorse of the global economy. Atkinson outlines three essential takeaways: the war is redirecting capital toward new production, storage, pipelines, and LNG infrastructure; diversification through expanded supply from the Americas, renewables, and nuclear will take years rather than months; and lasting energy security will require greater redundancy, from larger inventories to spare capacity the world may never need to use. "Middle East war is changing the debate from energy transition alone to energy resilience, where energy is produced, how it moves, and how much backup the world is willing to pay for." Energy Future Now is a series from @_RCEnergy and the National Center for Energy Analytics, offering timely conversations on markets, policy, and technology in energy. 🔗energyanalytics.org/now

In case you missed it yesterday: Visiting Fellow @CurtisSchube testified before the Texas Senate Committee on Natural Resources on a liability most people haven't thought about: who pays when wind and solar sites reach the end of their life. His recommendation: Texas should require financial assurance, in irrevocable form, before a project begins (not year 10 or 20, as current law allows), and set a firm statutory minimum instead of relying on a company-hired engineer's estimate. Why it matters: turbine blades, foundations, and solar panels (which contain lead and cadmium) are costly to dispose of, and most facilities haven't even reached end-of-life yet. Blade waste alone is projected to hit 2.2 million tons by 2050. It's not hypothetical. Texas has already seen ~3,000 abandoned turbine blades force an AG lawsuit, plus Chapter 11 filings from two Texas wind and solar companies. The research behind it: renewable energy financial assurance laws averaged a 1.18 GPA nationally (1 A, 26 failing), versus 3.40 for oil and gas (26 As). Texas scored a C for renewables, an A for oil and gas. Read the full testimony: energyanalytics.org/research… Backed by the full state-by-state research: energyanalytics.org/research…

The Independent Review has just published the article that I co-authored with Mathieu Gomes in its Fall 2026 edition. Our piece, “Socially Responsible Investing: A Resource Misallocation Disaster in the Making,” discusses the fatal flaws in socially responsible or so-called sustainable investing and analyzes Europe’s current attempt to centrally plan its financial markets through its ESG, climate, and sustainability mandates. This controlled European market experiment is already leading to unintended economic and financial consequences through a misallocation of resources and a distortion of capital flows, especially around the energy sector. @EnergyRealities @MarkPMills @TPPF @ManhattanInst @SFOF_States @Heritage @AEI @APIenergy @4AmericanEnergy @aier @EPRINC_DC @hamminstitute @petronerds @CFAinstitute @FIASI_NY @NYUStern @NYUSternCSB #energy #markets #investing #finance #climate #esg #sustainability #netzero #renewables #cleanenergy #fossilfuels #emissions #carbon #eu #europeangreendeal #energytransition #sfdr #csrd independent.org/tir/2026-fal…

NCEA advisor Julio M. Ottino and Brian Uzzi have a new piece in @FortuneMagazine on a question every leadership team should be asking as AI moves from a tool for doing to a tool for thinking. Their framing: AI can act as a peacemaker or a sensemaker. A peacemaker resolves contradictions and hands back a coherent answer. A sensemaker does the harder thing: it exposes contradictions, surfaces hidden assumptions, and keeps competing interpretations alive long enough to teach us something. Drawing on Meta's "CEO agent" experiment and its Project OT rollout, Ottino and Uzzi make the case that the most efficient AI systems risk becoming sophisticated mirrors, reflecting a leader's own worldview back to them, more articulate and more persuasive, rather than challenging it. Their prompt for leaders evaluating AI tools: does it just make you faster, or does it also make you better at seeing beyond yourself? Read the full piece: fortune.com/2026/09/15/ai-ce…

$3.4 trillion. That's how much the world is projected to invest in energy in 2026. The war in Iran hasn't slowed that number down. It's reshaping where the money goes. In our new issue brief, Energy Investment and the Iran War, NCEA Senior Fellow @NeilAtkinson58 breaks down what the data show: ▪️ Renewables, nuclear, grids, and energy efficiency are expected to account for roughly two-thirds of total global energy investment in 2026. ▪️ Natural gas investment is set to rise more than 10%, to approximately $330 billion, the highest level in ten years. ▪️ Coal investment is projected to reach $180 billion, driven largely by China and heightened energy-security concerns. ▪️ Global grid investment is projected to reach $550 billion, compared with just over $100 billion for power-sector battery storage. The central question is whether the crisis will lead countries to prioritize more diversified, resilient, and secure energy systems. 🔗energyanalytics.org/research…

Senior Fellow Patrick J. McCormick III will testify before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs on Wednesday, September 2 at 10:00 am ET. The hearing, "No Flame, More Pain: How State and Local Bans on Natural Gas Increase Costs," examines the cost impact of state and local restrictions on natural gas. Details and livestream: oversight.house.gov/hearing/…

"Crude oil is useless" — and that's the problem right now. This morning, Senior Fellow @NeilAtkinson58 joined @BBCRadio4's Today program to explain why the Brent crude price is telling you the wrong story about energy markets. Key points: ▪️ Ship-tracking data suggests 6–8 million barrels a day of crude are moving again, but that's only around 50% of pre-war volumes, achieved through ship owners going dark on satellite tracking and transferring cargo between vessels outside the strait. ▪️ Crude oil, in his words, is "in itself useless" — its value is entirely in what it becomes: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel. And that's where the real shortage is. The Middle East normally supplies 4–5 million barrels a day of these refined products, and those exports remain cut off. ▪️ Add in Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, and the global refining industry is running flat out to meet demand. ▪️ The number to watch isn't Brent at ~$90/barrel, it's diesel in Europe, trading close to $170 a barrel. That gap is what eventually shows up in inflation and costs for industry and consumers. These higher product costs feed into industry costs and, from there, into what consumers ultimately pay. Listen to the full clip below. 👇

Are regional transmission organizations still working the way they were designed to? RTOs coordinate two-thirds of America's electricity supply, but rising demand, plant retirements, and more intermittent generation are straining the markets they oversee. A new issue brief, Regional Transmission Organizations: Problem or Solution, from Senior Fellows Jonathan A. Lesser, PhD, and @drbennettTX breaks down why: ▪️ Frequent rule changes are discouraging investment in new generation and transmission. ▪️ Price caps can starve generators of revenue, while capacity markets rely on rules vulnerable to manipulation. ▪️ Transmission costs are often socialized — sometimes subsidizing poorly located renewables over reliable generation near demand. ▪️ Nearly 1,000%. PJM's capacity auction price jumped from ~$29/MW-day (2024–25) to $333+/MW-day (2027–28) — an est. $16B/year hit to ratepayers. RTOs were built for a grid that no longer exists. 🔗Read the brief or listen on the go: energyanalytics.org/research…

As energy demand rises, the choice is increasingly clear: embrace Pennsylvania’s energy abundance or constrain it with policies that make power more expensive & less reliable. More from @MyCommonwealth’s @AndrewLewisPA & @EnergyRealities’ @MarkPMills ⬇️ commonwealthfoundation.org/b…

By 2035, the world could be short 10-12 million tons of copper a year — a number worth sitting with as we celebrate the EV transition. Advisor Peter Bryant joined Hisham Allam on @devaidjobs Dialogues to unpack whether EVs are really as green as they look. His answer: it's complicated. Mining carries its own environmental footprint, mines take 15-25 years to develop, and hybrids may cut emissions faster than EVs alone. The real question isn't whether EVs are good or bad, it's whether we're facing the full cost of the transition honestly. 🎧 Full episode: developmentaid.org/news-stre…

The U.S. is the world's largest petroleum and LNG exporter. It has exactly one U.S.-flagged LNG carrier to move it. In our new issue brief, "U.S. Energy Security Comes Only with Maritime Strength," NCEA Senior Fellow G. Allen Brooks lays out the risk: producing energy means nothing if you can't move it, and almost none of what America exports travels on an American ship. ▪️ The U.S.-flagged fleet has just 188 oceangoing vessels of 1,000 gross tons or more. ▪️ China alone built 55% of the world's new ship tonnage in 2024. The U.S. share was 0.04%. ▪️ California already imports 61% of its refinery crude, leaning on foreign tankers and Jones Act waivers to keep supply flowing. Read the full brief: energyanalytics.org/research…

AI's energy story isn't about data centers. It's about what happens after — the wealth effect rippling through manufacturing, shipping, and construction. Executive Director @MarkPMills told @FinancialSense_ : that ripple is 10x bigger than the data centers themselves. financialsense.com/podcast/2…

While the world debates Beijing's solar panels and EVs, China quietly built the largest fossil fuel stockpile on Earth: 1.4 billion barrels of oil storage, refining capacity matching the U.S., and an LNG import network built almost from scratch in a decade. The payoff? When war closed the Strait of Hormuz this year, China simply drew down reserves and cut imports — barely blinking while the rest of the world braced for a price shock. The "clean energy dragon" is mostly marketing. The real strategy is energy security through fossil fuel dominance — coal, oil, and gas still meet 78% of China's energy needs. Read advisor and Senior Fellow @PaulHTice's take on what this means for global energy policy and the West's own transition strategy 👇 Op-ed: realclearenergy.org/articles… Full research: energyanalytics.org/research…

Right now, two opposite headlines are circulating about data centers and your electric bill. One says they've already cost ratepayers $23 billion. Another, from EPRI, says they've actually pushed prices down. Congress has a moratorium bill. States are passing their own. New research from Executive Director @MarkPMills and Visiting Fellow @ShonHiatt traces the actual path: data centers do raise wholesale prices where they connect (~$3.44/MWh), but by the time that reaches a bill, it's a 0.62% increase — under $1/month, and only at co-ops and municipal utilities. Investor-owned utilities, 68% of U.S. customers, see no effect. The wholesale-to-retail step is where most of this debate goes wrong. Read the full brief: energyanalytics.org/research…

53% of Americans now say data centers are why their electricity bill went up. Two years ago that number was 28%. New research from Executive Director @MarkPMills and Visiting Fellow @ShonHiatt digs into the actual data: existing data centers aren't the reason. Doubling a utility's data-center load moves the average residential rate about 0.6% — under $1 a month. That small effect shows up almost entirely at rural co-ops and municipal utilities, not the investor-owned utilities serving 68% of American households. What is real: data centers do push up wholesale prices where they connect, since new load means dispatching more expensive power. That's a genuine cost — just not the one on your bill yet. The bigger question is who pays for the data centers coming online over the next five years. Read the full brief: energyanalytics.org/research…

One of the clearest breakdowns of global energy reality out there: density beats intermittency, wealth is what lets nations adapt and clean up, and "net zero" roadmaps built on falling energy demand were never realistic. NCEA Advisor, Scott W. Tinker, PhD, sat down with @triggerpod for this conversation. piped.video/watch?v=p7gyAkrL…

Is there a ceiling on oil prices right now? Senior Fellow @NeilAtkinson58 isn't so sure. In the latest Energy Future Now, Atkinson and Deputy Executive Director @portiamills examine how renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities, a resurgent Houthi threat in the Red Sea, and Ukraine's drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure are combining to keep global oil markets on edge. With Brent crude already back near $100 a barrel and U.S. diesel prices climbing toward $5 a gallon, Atkinson explains why the market has little room left to absorb further disruption. ▶️ Watch the full discussion: realclearenergy.org/video/20… 📄 Read Atkinson's op-ed in RealClearEnergy: realclearenergy.org/articles… Energy Future Now is a new series from @_RCEnergy and the National Center for Energy Analytics — timely conversations on markets, policy, and technology in energy. Follow along to be first to hear reactions to the news shaping global energy.