Kilowatt Madness
Trump’s electricity crisis — and ours
Trump lies all the time, and his MAGA sycophants continue to worship him, including here on NT.
He lied about lowering electricity prices. Krugman proves it. MAGA worship continues.
He lies about windmills in New Jersey. Krugman proves it. MAGA worship continues.
How STUPID are these people???
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
We’re hearing a lot of talk about stagflation now, for good reason. Tariffs and mass deportations are both stagflationary: They increase inflation while depressing growth.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s a third major stagflationary force coming into play: Soaring electricity prices, which will also hurt growth while increasing inflation.
Now, during the 2024 campaign Donald Trump boasted a lot about how he would bring down energy prices. He talked very big, and made specific promises. Notably, he declared that he would cut the price of electricity in half within 12 months of taking office:
So how’s that going?
And this is only the start. Many analysts expect further large increases in electricity prices over the next year or more, largely because of surging demand from AI data centers. The electricity outlook is sufficiently scary that Texas — Texas! — has passed a new law giving the grid operator the right to cut off data centers during periods of power shortage.
An aside: In the America I grew up in, people who made big boasts about what they would achieve then completely failed to deliver were considered unserious blowhards. What happened to that country?
But Trump has a scapegoat, which probably won’t surprise you — renewable energy:
It’s unclear what his theory is. How does adding wind and solar generating capacity — increasing electricity supply — lead to higher prices?
To the extent that there is a story here, it involves what I’ve called MAGA brain , “the belief that the only way you can get results is by being tough and nasty, avoiding anything that might be considered woke” — which includes renewable energy.
As it happens, the data overwhelmingly reject Trump’s claims about renewables and prices. The Department of Energy has data on the share of each state’s electricity generated by renewable sources. For example, Iowa gets 80 percent of its utility-scale power from renewables, mostly wind, while New Jersey only gets 4.6 percent from renewables. Yet Iowa’s electricity prices actually fell slightly from May 2024 to May 2025, while NJ prices rose 10 percent.
Trump, however, has his own reality:
Except New Jersey doesn’t have any windmills . There have been proposals for large offshore wind farms, but they have never come to fruition — and Trump has signed executive orders that will effectively ban future offshore wind development.
So why are electricity prices soaring? The main answer is clearly a surge in power consumption by data centers , driven mainly by AI. Crypto is also playing a role, although we don’t know for sure how much — and thanks to the influence of the crypto bros, we may never find out :
Can we blame Trump for rising electricity prices? Not yet. The AI boom began well before Trump won the election, and the grid just wasn’t ready. Trump is, however, doing all he can to make the problem worse — boosting crypto and AI while blocking the expansion of renewable energy, which has accounted for the bulk of recent growth in electric generating capacity:
Oh, and the Trump administration is rolling back energy efficiency standards for home appliances, which will worsen the electricity shortage.
So the electricity crisis is set to get worse. And it will matter a lot. Households spend a substantial share of their budgets on electricity, but the overall impact of electricity prices goes well beyond your utility bills: electricity is an important cost of doing business, and an increase in that cost will be passed on to consumers. By my estimate, overall spending on electricity — both direct spending by consumers and spending by businesses that ultimately gets passed on to consumers — is about 2 percent of GDP. So large electricity price increases could have a significant effect on the cost of living.
Rising electricity costs will also lead businesses to produce and invest less. In particular, as I wrote the other day , energy shortages could bring the boom in AI spending to a screeching halt — and that spending is currently the only thing keeping the U.S. economy above stall speed, growth so slow that economic weakness becomes self-reinforcing.
Many people, myself included, have drawn parallels between the current AI frenzy and the telecoms boom and bust of the late 1990s — an alarming parallel, because the telecom bust led to years of elevated unemployment. But as Peter Oppenheimer of Goldman Sachs has pointed out , there have been many such boom-bust cycles over the centuries, going back to Britain’s canal mania in the 1790s. And here’s one analogy that has occurred to me: What would have happened if, midway through the 1790s canal-building boom, investors had realized that there wasn’t enough water to fill all those new canals?
So the electricity crisis is serious, adding significantly to the risk of stagflation. Unfortunately, it would be hard to find policymakers I’d trust less to deal with this crisis than the Trump administration, whose energy policy is driven by petty prejudices (Trump is still mad about the windmills he thinks ruin the view from his Scottish golf course), macho posturing ( real men burn stuff ), and hallucinations (the imaginary windmills of New Jersey.)
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Here, we'll see either our NT MAGAs staying away in droves, or attacking Krugman, ignoring the data in the seed.
Of course.
Too egghead for most of them.
Not even Trump could wreck the electricity supply in 10 months. Trump certainly hasn't been removing electricity generating capacity from the grid. The data suggests that adding alternative generating capacity encouraged increased consumption. And consumption has increased faster than alternatives can be deployed.
Well damn. Just when I was about to buy EV. Oh well, maybe next life..................../s
Wait for the Toyota water engine to make EVs obsolete, lol.
They already have 5L V8's running on hydrogen.
Cant wait for Doc Browns "Mr Fusion " attatchment ......
This is a lie, while they don't have the offshore projects, New Jersey does have windmills, If you have to lie about something that is so easy to prove wrong you have no point.
You cant see the forest for the trees
That is from a link in the article. New Jersey has five windmills that produce almost none of New Jersey's energy. So how can Trump blame them for anything?
ChatGPT says there is a sixth all alone by itself. The six produce 0.03% of the state's electricity. That's right, less than one-half of one percent.
... which, according to Lord Donald, is "KILLING NEW JERSEY"... in all-caps.
But NT MAGAs will always find some way to defend their Master...
Well that is true.
Thank you John and Bob for proving me 100% correct, that statement was a lie.
He said there are no windmills in New Jersey in the context of Trump saying they boomed the states energy costs. If the windmills produce less than one half of one percent of NJ electricity Trump is the one that didnt have a point, not Krugman.
It's pointless trying to argue with the brain dead. They know what Trump said and know its full of shit but they don't care and will act like the petulant children they are. They know Trump is a liar, they just don't care because he's lying for them not against them.
This is interesting, John.
George considers Tump's statement to be true, I suppose because there are indeed some windmills in New Jersey... although Trump did not simply say that there are windmills in New Jersey. George ignores the fact that the essence of Trump's statement, "WINDMILLS ARE KILLING NEW JERSEY" is manifestly ridiculous.
Krugman said there are no windmills in New Jersey, although there are in fact six. This is important to George.
Trump said windmills are killing New Jersey, although they are far too few to have any significance. This is not important to George.
It's a fascinating phenomenon, don't you think?
Same old same old.
I see the expected partisan replies in the seed.
As I see it, the issue is the continued failure of leadership to see the big picture in all of this. Krugman says this above..
The failure was in shutting down other power plans in the name of climate change before replacement generation was up and running. It was already known that the demand for power was going to continue to grow at a faster pace. In 2023 the total electrical generation was 4,178 billion kWh (kilowatt hours). Conversely the electrical generation in China was higher. China has been building new coal fired plants as coal still supplies around 56% of total generation. While that is dropping and China is moving towards more carbon neutral generation, that does take time. Conversely here in the US coal plants are being shut down due to regulations around emissions before the replacement source is built. (In 2023, coal accounted for 16% of electrical generation). Here in the US we also have dams being removed which removes hydro-generation of electricity.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
People's Republic of China Electricity Generation Mix 2024/2025 | Low-Carbon Power Data
I remember an article where it stated that China is currently generating more than twice the electricity that the US is generating.
Ignoring the simple issue that Trump bloviates, why are we shutting down existing generating plants in the name of climate change when replacement plants have not yet been set up to replace the electrical generation when we already knew that the existing generation was not sufficient to meet the current needs? We also know as more AI data farms are set up, the demand for more electricity will continue to grow. It's simple supply and demand, when the demand grows and supply does not prices will go up.
IMO Krugman is great at shouting to the sky. He narrows down to a specific issue yet fails to see the bigger picture. In other words, he misses the forest for the trees.
More importantly, why are we shutting down the entire alternative energy sector, when every other advanced nation is going all in?
To the best of my knowledge, the Trump administration has not shut down any alternative energy sector. His administration has implemented policies and actions that restrict and hinder the growth of wind and solar power industries but not shut any down. In looking at it, it's not much different than the policies and actions used by the Biden administration to restrict coal and gas power generation.
If you have other information please share because I cannot find anywhere that the Trump administration has shut down any energy sector.
"are shutting down" is present tense" - the action is not yet complete.
"has shut down" is past tense - the action is complete.[✘]
What is Krugman rambling on about? The video is of candidate Trump addressing Detroit voters. Detroit has been embroiled in a number of controversies concerning DTE Energy bait & switch tactics to request rate increases. DTE is a publicly traded corporation whose current NYSE value is $140.43/share. Apparently Detroit has experienced rate volatility over the last 10 months and the state AG has threatened to become involved. I don't live in Detroit so I don't know all the details.
Apparently Krugman is trying to use this very local campaign promise made by Trump to generate an enormous cloud of obscuring smoke. Krugman is trying to hide the glaring fact that the Biden administration was trying to regulate an all-electric economy into existence without having infrastructure in place. Biden was requiring EV chargers to electric ranges before the infrastructure was ready for such a transition.
Data centers and crypto miners were a growing issue before Trump began his second term. The grid didn't go to shit over the last 10 months. Pres. Biden and his regulators could have addressed data centers and crypto miners since they were threatening Biden's all-electric future. But, no, the money was too attractive. So Biden did what seems to be common practice in D.C. -- he kicked the can.
Not even Trump could wreck the electricity infrastructure in 10 months. That's nothing more than hair-on-fire demagoguery. Trump can be blamed for ending the sugar daddy money giveaway to passive investors which is what seems to irk Krugman the most. But those passive investors never built one damned thing.