The Energy Crisis No One Prepared For: Speed

Energy debates are usually framed as a battle of preferences: oil versus renewables, gas versus coal, nuclear versus everything. But that framing is increasingly detached from what is actually driving prices, reliability, and household bills.

The issue now is simpler . . . and more dangerous.

We are running out of fast energy.

By “fast energy,” I don’t mean a fuel type. I mean energy systems that can be permitted, financed, built, connected, and operated on timelines that match the real world — political cycles, economic cycles, and the accelerating cadence of electricity demand. The world is not short of ideas. It is short of deliverable capacity.

And when energy stops being deliverable on schedule, consumers pay — first in prices, then in reliability, and finally in the quiet erosion of industrial competitiveness.

Start with electricity demand. The International Energy Agency forecasts global electricity demand growth of 3.3% in 2025 and 3.7% in 2026, reaching over 29,000 TWh in 2026 — some of the strongest growth rates of the last decade.

What is driving this? Not one thing. It’s the stack: electrification, industrial activity, air conditioning, and - yes - data centers. The IEA explicitly notes expanding data centers as part of the demand story. And in its work on energy and AI, the IEA projects global data center electricity consumption nearly doubling to ~945 TWh by 2030, with data center load growing around 15% per year from 2024–2030 in its base case.

That demand isn’t theoretical. It’s already showing up in utility forecasts, local permitting fights, transmission queue backlogs, and - most visibly - in the bills paid by households and small businesses.

Now compare that demand reality to what we are building.

Renewables are expanding rapidly in many markets. But high renewables penetration is not the same thing as fast firm capacity. Wind and solar can be permitted and installed faster than a major nuclear plant, but they still require transmission, interconnection, and balancing resources. Those “system” requirements rarely move at the speed of press releases.

Meanwhile, the global system is leaning harder on the kinds of assets that are dispatchable and durable - gas generation, life-extended coal, and diesel backup - because those are often the only tools that can keep pace when new load shows up before the grid is ready.

This is the “fast energy” squeeze: the world is pulling demand forward while pushing supply - and especially firm supply - into longer and longer timelines.

Energy prices are cyclical for a reason. Underinvestment today becomes scarcity tomorrow - then high prices trigger overinvestment, and the cycle repeats.

Even the near-term oil balance illustrates the point. In its Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. EIA forecasts global liquid fuels consumption rising by 1.1 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2025 and 1.2 million b/d in 2026, while global liquid fuels production increases by 3.0 million b/d in 2025 and more than 1.2 million b/d in 2026. That surplus - paired with rising inventories - translates into price pressure. EIA expects global oil inventories to rise through 2026 and forecasts Brent averaging about $55/bbl in Q1 2026, staying near that level for the rest of 2026.

That’s the cycle in one snapshot: when supply is ahead of demand, prices soften.

But the real consumer risk isn’t “cheap oil forever.” It’s what happens when investment and execution lag long enough that the system flips from surplus to deficit - especially in electricity, where reliability failures are political events and household pain is immediate.

The energy industry is the business of long lead times. The problem is that our planning institutions - and our politics - are increasingly operating on short lead times. That mismatch is where volatility is born.

In the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, there’s a revealing detail: it notes that in its stated policies scenario, prices around $75–$80 per barrel imply additional production restraint and an increase in spare capacity - already at around 6 mb/d, described as record levels.

Set aside the specific oil price range. The broader message is the same: spare capacity is a shock absorber, and when policy or underinvestment erodes that absorber, prices become more sensitive to disruptions.

In electricity, the “shock absorber” is firm capacity plus transmission plus fuel assurance. But we’ve made all three harder to build quickly.

Permitting is not a side issue. Interconnection is not a paperwork issue. Transmission is not a “later” issue. These are the practical gates that determine whether new energy is real - or just announced.

And the tragedy is that consumers ultimately bear the cost of delay. When infrastructure fails to keep pace, the system compensates in expensive ways:

• emergency procurement,
• scarcity pricing,
• higher capacity payments,
• diesel generators filling gaps utilities can’t close in time,
• and rate increases that arrive long after the ribbon cuttings.

Politicians love to talk about affordability. But affordability is largely a function of whether the system can add capacity on time.

The world is not short on resources. It is short on things that can be delivered at the speed of modern demand.

Consider what is getting slower:

• Permitting: local resistance, litigation risk, and fragmented authority.
• Interconnection: queue backlogs and cost disputes.
• Transmission: multi-jurisdiction routing fights and long construction horizons.
• Workforce and equipment: tight labor markets and long lead times for transformers, turbines, and grid components.
• Capital discipline: investors demanding returns after years of boom-and-bust, making “overbuild” less likely.

Meanwhile, what is getting faster?

• Load growth from data centers, reshoring, electrification, and climate-driven cooling demand.

When demand accelerates and deliverability slows, prices rise and reliability is strained. That isn’t ideology. That’s physics and finance.

A credible “fast energy” plan doesn’t pick a winner. It builds a portfolio that is actually deliverable on schedule:

1. Treat transmission and interconnection as national infrastructure, not local trivia. If demand is national, the grid can’t be purely local.
2. Rebuild the firm capacity pipeline. Gas with clear standards, nuclear with realistic timelines, storage where it pencils, demand response where it’s measurable.
3. Force transparency on who pays. Ratepayers can’t be the default backstop while large 24/7 loads get socialized upgrades.
4. Stop confusing announcements with capacity. If it can’t be built and connected inside a realistic window, it’s not supply.
5. Build spare capacity intentionally. The cheapest energy insurance is the capacity you already have when the shock arrives.

The hardest part of energy policy is saying out loud what everyone knows: the “energy transition” is not a single build. It’s a multi-decade rebuild of the world’s largest machine - while it remains in operation.

That is why “fast energy” matters so much. It’s the bridge between ambition and reality. Without it, we get volatility, backlash, and bills that households can’t predict.

The world doesn’t need more slogans. It needs a plan that respects time.