In the first four months of 2026, electricity, natural gas, and coal prices suggested continued favorable economics for coal generation in MISO. The dark spread of coal, the difference between the fuel costs for coal-fired generation and the wholesale electricity price, in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region outpaced a similar measure of revenue relative to fuel costs for natural gas-fired generators known as the spark spread.
In the Annual Energy Outlook 2026 (AEO2026), our long-term outlook, we project electricity consumed by data center servers will increase across the commercial building stock, increasing more in standalone data centers than in all other data center rooms combined. By 2050, server consumption alone reaches between 446 billion kilowatthours (BkWh) and 818 billion BkWh. The highest end of the range reflects faster growth in server power draw and installed stock in our High Electricity Demand case. Standalone data centers are represented in the other buildings category, where we project servers will consume 581 BkWh of electricity in 2050 in our High Electricity Demand case. Across all cases, servers alone accounted for an estimated 7% of commercial sector electricity consumption in 2025. Data center server electricity use grows to 22%–33% of commercial building electricity use by 2050 across our cases.
We forecast U.S. industrial natural gas consumption will climb to record highs through 2027 in our latest Short-Term Energy Outlook. Industrial consumption averaged a record 23.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2025, 1% more than the record 23.4 Bcf/d reached in 2023. In our forecast, consumption gradually increases further in 2026 and in 2027 as we expect the natural gas-weighted manufacturing index to also rise slightly over this period.
In our most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that annual electric power generation from utility-scale solar will surpass that from coal for the first time in 2026 within the electricity grid that covers most of Texas. Solar generation is expected to reach 78 billion kilowatthours (BkWh) in 2026 in the electricity grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) compared with 60 BkWh for coal.
Total energy production in the United States increased to a new record of 107 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2025, a 3.4% increase from the previous record set in 2024, according to new data in our Monthly Energy Review. Total production was driven by record-high production in natural gas, crude oil, natural gas plant liquids (NGPLs), and renewables. This was the fourth consecutive year in which the United States set a record for total energy production.
Rigzone talks to Simon Henderson, director of the Washington Institute's Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy, and Howard Shatz, a senior economist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy.
U.S. President Donald Trump's Iran comments are directly shaping the oil ecosystem, Naeem Aslam, CIO at Zaye Capital Markets, said.
House lawmakers made public a massive transportation bill Sunday that would impose new fees on electric vehicles.
Oil settled lower as traders weighed renewed US threats against Iran.
Such a move would represent a shift in the military alliance's strategy toward the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
