Oil’s Long Plateau, Clean Power Records & Texas’ AI Energy Boom
This week’s energy and tech stories highlight the competing forces reshaping global power systems. Oil demand remains stubbornly high through 2050, but clean electricity continues to surge in the U.S., grid-scale storage accelerates the shift to fully dispatchable renewables, Texas cements its rise as America’s AI-energy powerhouse, and China unveils the sheer scale of its mega-solar projects. These trends point to a world in transition — fast, uneven, and increasingly driven by electronics, data, and clean power.
📈 Oil Demand Outlook: Still Near 100 Million Barrels a Day Through 2050
The latest World Energy Outlook shows that global oil use remains remarkably resilient. In the IEA’s Current Policies Scenario, demand rises from today’s 100 million barrels per day to 113 million b/d by 2050, driven by freight, aviation, and petrochemical growth in emerging economies. Even in the Stated Policies Scenario, where more clean technologies take hold, demand only peaks at around 102 million b/d in 2030 before edging down to 97 million b/d mid-century. The report warns that meeting expected consumption will require another 25 million b/d of new supply by 2035, highlighting a widening gap between political narratives, EV projections, and the market reality of long-lived oil demand.
⚡ United States Set for Another Record Clean Power Buildout in 2025
The U.S. grid is on track for a landmark year: 59 GW of new electricity capacity is expected in 2025, and 92% of it will come from clean sources. Solar leads new installations once again, while grid-scale storage is set to nearly double, reshaping how and when electricity is supplied. With low costs, maturing supply chains, and huge interconnection queues, the U.S. power sector is shifting rapidly toward a cleaner, more flexible system.
🔋 Batteries Hit the Exponential Zone — and the Grid Economics Flip
Battery economics are now entering a full exponential phase, and the next doubling of storage capacity is expected to happen faster than any before it. The real system-shifter is grid-scale battery energy storage (BESS). When solar is paired with storage, sunlight stops being intermittent and becomes fully dispatchable — power can be delivered whenever the grid needs it, day or night. Once that threshold is crossed, coal becomes non-competitive, gas loses its balancing role, and nuclear looks increasingly slow and costly to build. This is the tipping point where grids move from fossil-limited to battery-backed, and when that happens, the speed of the transition accelerates dramatically.
🤖 Why Texas Is Becoming the Power Base for AI Factories
Texas is rapidly emerging as America’s new hub for AI megafacilities. As gigawatt-scale data centers chase cheap energy, abundant fuel, and fast permits, Texas is pulling ahead of traditional markets — and even beginning to challenge Virginia. With 15% of U.S. data center capacity and 16 GW more planned by 2030, Texas offers what hyperscalers want most: power availability. ERCOT’s unique, independent grid allows for faster approvals, while the state’s access to huge natural gas fields keeps energy costs low. Developers are increasingly turning to on-site power generation, bypassing slow utility upgrades and securing firm capacity themselves. With a pro-growth regulatory environment and some of the country’s lowest industrial energy prices, Texas is positioning itself as the benchmark for the next generation of AI infrastructure.
☀️ China’s Talatan Solar Park Is So Large It’s Visible From Space
China’s Talatan Solar Park is one of the world’s most extreme examples of renewable scale — a sprawling 600 km² complex on the Tibetan Plateau, roughly seven times the size of Manhattan. With around 17 GW of generating capacity, it forms a vast, shimmering sea of panels that can be spotted from orbit. The project reflects China’s rapid expansion of large-format solar clusters designed to feed power-hungry industrial hubs and rapidly growing cities hundreds of miles away.