I asked Catie Hausman, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, for an example of an especially important number in the new data. Rather than focusing on any one power source, she looked at the big picture of electricity generation from all utility-scale sources, which was up 2.8 percent in 2025 compared to the prior year. She explained why that's a significant increase.
"Total generation is up for two years in a row," she said. "One year might have been a blip, but now we're seeing two years in a row after decades of flat demand growth, and that's entirely consistent with what we know about data centers and also electrification and other broad market trends."
