FERC staff today issued its annual State of the Markets report for 2024 to provide the industry and public with key information on market conditions and emerging issues in natural gas and electricity markets as well as significant market trends and fundamentals for the year.
“This report is consistent with reports we have been regularly receiving from NERC as well as RTO sources, such as from PJM and MISO,” said Chairman Mark Christie. “The combination of rapidly increasing electricity demand, driven by hyperscale customers such as data centers, paired with the alarming rate of base load generation retirements and lack of new dispatchable generation, is not sustainable and must be addressed.”
The report outlines the following findings:
- Electricity demand increased across all regional organized markets by 2.8%.
- Overall, natural gas and wholesale electricity prices declined, although retail prices to consumers continued to increase.
- Extreme weather, the resource mix and electric load growth significantly impacted wholesale electricity markets.
- For the first time in several years, the total capacity of active projects waiting in the interconnection queue declined on an annual basis. Total capacity active in interconnection queues at the end of 2024 totaled 2,289 GW, down from 2,368 GW in 2023.
- Most capacity additions came from solar, natural gas, battery storage, and wind resources.
- More coal generation capacity was retired in 2024 than any other resource type, although natural gas capacity also continued to retire.
- Among the RTO/ISOs, the Midcontinent ISO experienced the most retirements.
- Over 5,000 circuit miles of transmission projects entered service.
The complete report can be found here.