CERAWeek 2025: FERC Chairman talks energy demand, LNG's crucial role

(WO) - In many of the panels during CERAWeek 2025 by S&P Global—whose event boasted a record-breaking over 10,000 attendees this year—LNG cropped up as an ever-present staple of discussion.  In many cases, such as the Leadership Dialogue with Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Mark Christie, LNG was not only a staple of discussion but, in his view, a staple for present and future energy generation.

“When it comes to the electric grid,” he said in his opening remarks, “we have a rendezvous with reality.”  With the revolution of A.I. spawning data centers across the nation and the world, power demands that were already predicted to rise have seen a significant boost in overall demand and strain on grids during peak times.  For example, Christie cited numbers from the week of January 20th this year, where a staggering 144 GW of energy was required to meet the demand peak for the RTO PJM during that period.

That peak is unlikely to be unusual in the coming years in Christie’s view, given that he called his home state of Virginia “ground zero for data center development, both in the United States and in the world.”  Per Christie, the A.I. data centers zone in Virginia alone increased demand for power by 20%, with nationwide A.I. operations to increase loads by 10-15 times.

Thanks to a robust energy mix, that peak 144 GW energy demand was met, but the issue of continually securing it becomes clear when each source is broken down by the numbers.  Per Christie, 44% was generated from natural gas, 22% was generated from nuclear and 22% was generated from coal.  Natural gas is often touted as the critical stopgap when it comes to what Christie called “deployables,” or energy sources that can be reliably deployed on demand, though coal and nuclear play no small part in this.  The “deployable” nature of these energy solutions is critical to balancing grid loads, according to Christie, even if wind and solar are deployed.  While these kinds of renewables aren’t applicable during the kind of peak winter load Christie mentioned earlier, they remain energy sources that fluctuate with the weather, meaning stabilizing sources like natural gas, nuclear or coal are absolutely critical to meeting demand consistently.

Yet coal is facing little expansion and substantial attempts to retire it; “for better or worse, we’re not building coal,” were Christie’s words.  Similarly, nuclear faces its own issues, mostly due to up-front costs that continue to make small modular reactors (SMRs) commercially inaccessible and make new facilities like the Georgia Votgle plant unlikely.

Beyond purely fiscal concerns, permitting and regulatory reform remain the largest roadblock to consistent energy supply.  “We’re trying to reconcile state policies that are literally 180 degrees opposite each other,” he said, using states like Illinois and Maryland as examples.  Despite these states’ measures to shut down conventional generation (using natural gas, nuclear or coal) these same states regularly import power from the same source in order to meet demand.  The result is “very divergent policies in the resources they want and the resources they want to build,” Christie said.  Regular litigation on FERC permits issued for new projects—mostly pipelines—also add to the issue, delaying progress on needed transport capacity.  However, “[taking] seven years to build combine cycle gas is not an argument not to do it.”

If rising demand for A.I. data centers and regular year-on-year growth is to be met, deployables—mostly gas—will be needed, in Christie’s view.  “We’re not building Votgle’s or coal,” he said, so then when it comes to gas, “there’s no other way to do it.”