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Posted 2 years ago | 2 minute read

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PJM sets out resource retirements, replacements and risks

The third phase of PJM’s ongoing study of impacts associated with the energy transition highlights potential reliability risks to meeting growing electricity demand.

The analysis shows that 40GW of existing generation are at risk of retirement by 2030. Of which 6GW of 2022 deactivations, 6GW of announced retirements, 25GW of potential policy-driven retirements and 3GW of potential economic retirements. Combined, this represents 21% of PJM’s current installed capacity.

Source: PJM

The Energy Transition in PJM: Resource Retirements, Replacements and Risks report, published on February 24, highlights four trends that, in combination, present increasing reliability risks due to a potential timing mismatch between resource retirements, load growth and the pace of new generation entry under a possible “low new entry” scenario:

In addition to the retirements, PJM’s long-term load forecast shows demand growth of 1.4% per year for the PJM footprint over the next 10 years. Due to the expansion of highly concentrated clusters of data centers, combined with overall electrification, certain individual zones exhibit more significant demand growth – as high as 7% annually.

On the other side of the balance sheet, PJM’s New Services Queue consists primarily of renewables (94%) and gas (6%). But it noted that despite the nameplate capacity of renewables in the interconnection queue (290GW), the historical rate of completion for renewable projects has been approximately 5%. This means that the current pace of new entry would be insufficient to keep up with expected retirements and demand growth by 2030.

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