As winter grips the U.S., energy reliability becomes more critical than ever. Millions of Americans rely on the seamless functioning of the grid to power and heat homes, businesses and transportation systems. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) 2024–2025 Winter Reliability Assessment underscores the growing demand for electricity during the winter months, driven by increased electrification, economic growth and severe weather conditions. NERC warned that, should the U.S. face severe cold this winter, many states could face power supply shortfalls. Keeping the lights on and homes warm takes every coal plant we have.
A Grid Under Pressure
Winter energy consumption in the U.S. is climbing, fueled by the electrification of heating systems, expanded industrial activity and the rapid growth of data centers. NERC’s report highlights the strain this puts on the grid, particularly during extreme cold snaps when demand surges. Unlike other energy sources, coal provides dependable, dispatchable generation, ensuring grid stability during peak demand.
Natural gas faces challenges during winter. While essential to the energy mix — providing about 43% of U.S. power and heating about 45% of American homes — bitter cold can disrupt supply by freezing production and distribution networks, creating price volatility and leaving power plants with no fuel. Renewables are also limited by reduced sunlight hours and unpredictable wind patterns during winter storms. Coal’s ability to store fuel on-site and deliver power consistently makes it a cornerstone of the nation’s energy security, especially when other sources falter.
Coal Helps Prevent Blackouts
Recent events have shown the fragility of the grid during severe winter weather events. Two years ago, Winter Storm Elliott forced the largest recorded electricity load shed in the history of the Eastern interconnection – the grid system covering two thirds of the U.S. – largely because of inadequate gas supplies. More than 90 gigawatts (GW), or 13% of the generating capacity in the Eastern Interconnection, failed to run or operated at reduced capacity during the storm. Gas-fired capacity accounted for 63% of the outages. On the PJM grid, the nation’s largest serving 65 million Americans, gas capacity accounted for 70% — or 32 GW – of outages.
Winter Storm Elliot was the fifth time in the prior 11 years, and the third time in the previous five, that there was a significant wintertime outage. While no generating source came through these storms unscathed, the gas system has proven alarmingly vulnerable even as we ask more and more of it. The loss of fuel-secure coal capacity and the dispatchable fuel diversity it has long offered is pushing the nation’s power supply to the brink of failure.
Continued efforts – at both the federal and state levels of government – to force the closure of essential coal capacity are a grave mistake: a mistake the incoming Trump administration must make a priority to address on day one.
Acute winter power supply emergencies are unfortunately just a preview of what the nation will be facing year-round as power demand surges and efforts to bring new capacity online falter. Now is the time to recognize the critical importance of the nation’s coal fleet and pursue a policy pivot that supports this essential source of fuel-secure, dispatchable power instead of undermining it.