Since April of 2025 President Trump has been continually advised by Department of Energy Secretary Christopher Wright regarding continuing increased demand for electricity, largely due to industrial growth from data centers and other industrial projects. This is to be expected during a period of economic growth. Sadly, during the previous administration very little was done to increase the development of base load power (natural gas generation or nuclear power plants).

The hell bent for leather approach during both previous Democrat administrations was for a massive movement towards renewable energy credits. The 29% increase in the cost of electricity over the last 17 years can largely be attributed to infrastructure increases in renewable energy due to the requirement for not only the cost of the renewable device but also for the base load device necessary to back the renewable energy facility when it is no longer effectively operating due to a lack of sunshine or a lack of wind. Which tends to happen more often when it’s very hot or very cold.

And so, the President acted. “Trump admin issues emergency orders to prevent blackouts, ‘sweep out the nonsense’ of previous energy policies.”

Earlier this week, the Department of Energy issued its latest emergency order to address a heatwave across the Southeast, putting grid capabilities at risk of blackouts, allowing maximum utilization of certain areas’ electric generating units. Secretary Wright acted decisively. ‘In my department, we’ve issued four emergency orders just in the last few weeks to stop the closure of reliable plants, so we can keep the lights on and stop pushing up electricity prices. – DOE Secretary Chris Wright “

Once such power plant was the J.H. Campbell Generating Facility in Michigan. A 1,500MW coal plant. The continued operations of this facility will provide adequate resource power to the grid for the citizens of that region. Wright’s actions were focused on preventing blackouts in the regions impacted by the removal of service from this power plant. To be sure, there will be costs associated with operations of this facility. But if you ask consumers if they would rather be without reliable power or have blackouts you do not have to search for an answer.

You might ask yourself who would be opposed to having exemptions for these power plants to continue through what is apparently only a couple of months to August of 2025 to ensure reliable power in the grid. Well, evidently, it’s the regional transmission organization RTO that’s tasked with ensuring reliability of distribution of power and ensuring stability of the grid in that region. It’s MISO. The mid-continent independent service organization. The citizens of Louisiana know MISO well, SPP too, since the New Orleans area blackout event last month. Start with asking the citizens of the metropolitan area of the city of New Orleans how they feel about MISO’s recent planning ability during the Memorial Day weekend blackout. You can even reach out to the citizens of the Shreveport Louisiana metro area and ask them how they feel about the southwest power pool, the RTO that failed to properly plan a few weeks earlier when that area experienced a blackout from poor planning. This gives me pause to wonder if we’re witnessing the rise and fall of the RTO empires.

On June 23rd of this year the Regional State Committee of MISO, the Organization of MISO States (OMS) an advisory group comprised of some 17 member states and jurisdictions that all have utilities that participate in the regional transmission organization RTO known as MISO, joined the dust up and sought rehearing at the Department of Energy in an effort to support MISO’s position, clearly opposing the Trump administration in their efforts to provide additional secure power into the grid, by MISO’s challenging the continued operation of the J.H. Campbell Generating Facility.

8 members out of 17 voted to approve the rehearing request. Thereby allowing opposition for the President’s plan for the provision of providing secure baseload electricity for a few months through the hottest season. The risk to the public of such is simply shameful. It’s seems obvious that what happened under RTO’s oversight with two major blackouts in just the past few weeks must be giving reasonable concern to the Secretary as the DOE had to come in and handle this matter.

This situation of failing to provide adequate power resources is not going away. According to a White House fact sheet, the nation’s electricity demand is expected to rise 16% in the next five years – triple the growth forecast just one year ago.

All the while keeping in mind the duty of managing costs to minimize the impact on consumers, regulators are going to have to accept the obvious. We will have to adapt President Trump’s mantra of “drill baby drill” by converting it to “build baby build”. The nation needs more reliable baseload electrical generation and fast.

Secretary Wright put it best when he said, “I can assure you, the team at Department of Energy and across this administration are 24/7, seven days a week, working to get out the morass, the nonsense that got put in.”

What the Secretary’s knowledge demonstrates is that one of the largest impediments to building power plants in the United States are likely the regional transmission organizations RTO’s and their famous “queues” that are de facto choke points impeding the integration of new power plants into the grid. Since their creation by the FERC in 1996, RTO’s have massively grown and not always in a good way. Something that started out as simple as a mechanism to change the world to make it better has now seemingly become a mechanism to impede the rapid creation of power generation systems and their integration into the grid.

The Department of Energy needs to consider that sometimes it can give and other times it can take away. It may be time for a new approach to minimize federal regulatory impediments to the creation of generation while allowing for market values to continue. What we can certainly count on is that if the current system continues to operate on its wobbly path, new power plants will take three to five years at a minimum before they are even near the start point of interconnection to the grid. And that’s not going to help our citizens nor our country or our economy. Because between now and 2030 there’s going to be a lot of demand and a lot less generation ready to serve it. I pray the President handles this matter with his usual aplomb.