Energy Bad Boys

Affordability and rising electricity demand for data centers are top of mind for the energy industry. Now, Jigar Shah, Tyler Norris, and others in the wind and solar advocacy camp claim prices are rising not because of the massive national malinvestment in wind and solar resources, but because we are not fully using the grid we already have.

What are the most expensive and affordable ways to power new data centers? That’s the question your Energy Bad Boys set out to find in this week’s article—and we created an incredibly useful dashboard for all of our paid subscribers that allows you to work with the numbers yourselves. By now, everyone knows that data centers use massive quantities of electricity and require 24/7 power. As a result, the resources used to power them must provide a constant energy source.

This week, Always On Energy Research and the Institute for Energy Research published the remaining profiles for our Blue States, High Rates interactive website. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Sarah Montalbano, the site now contains energy policy profiles for all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and 10 regional summaries. Writing 61 profiles was a heavy lift, and we hope you’ll enjoy exploring the website.

There is a massive pushback against data center growth in the United States. Our friend Robert Bryce’s data center rejection database now tracks over 300 bans across the country as of this writing. Furthermore, these bans now transcend local and county bans to affect data center development across entire states, including New York and Texas.

On July 20th, 2026, Southwest Power Pool West (SPPW), the newestregional transmission organization (RTO) area in America, declared an Energy Emergency Alert 3, narrowly avoiding rolling blackouts. According to GridStatus, SPPW’s close call was caused by high demand, exceedingly low wind generation, a forced outage at a 250 MW coal unit, and reduced solar output. In all likelihood, SPPW only avoided blackouts thanks to a massive influx of imports.

Battery storage has long been touted as the solution to wind and solar intermittency—or the variable nature of wind and solar electricity production. A recent report co-authored by one of the Bad Boys, Mitch Rolling, and Jonathan Lesser, Ph.D., for the National Center of Energy Analytics (NCEA), put this to the test.

A lot happened in the energy world this week. PJM’s latest capacity auction results were released, Lazard released its latest Levelized Cost of Energy Report, and New York imposed a one-year moratorium on data centers. While these are interesting events, there is plenty of time to write about them in the future. This week, we want to turn our attention to something more timely.

“It’s not who emits that counts, but who counts the emissions,” -Joseph Stalin, European Union Minister for Climate Change and the Environment, 2026. Big Tech companies continue to hit new high scores for their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) despite the Very Serious pledges they made in 2020 to be carbon-neutral by 2030. According to Microsoft’s latest sustainability report, the company’s GHGs exceeded 21 million metric tons in fiscal year 2025, up 27 percent from the year before.

Today, we are celebrating America’s 250th birthday by launching the all-new interactive Blue States, High Rates website featuring state electricity profiles for the original thirteen colonies. The website builds on the success of our December 2025 report by providing our readers with the information they need to win the energy affordability debate in each state. More profiles (beyond the original thirteen) will be uploaded in the coming weeks.

The coal industry has a friend in President Donald Trump. So far in his second term in office, the Trump admin has reduced regulatory and permitting hurdles, opened millions of acres for coal leasing, issued 202(c) Emergency Orders to temporarily keep several coal plants from closing, and issued Department of Energy (DOE) funds for upgrades, extensions, and even new coal builds in Alaska and West Virginia.