Financial Services Power & Renewables

ISO long-term load forecasting meets reality: A look at the five futures of the grid

Divergent scenarios challenge assumptions and illuminate uncertain path of U.S. power demand through 2050

byEnverus

CALGARY, Alberta (August 27, 2025) — Enverus Intelligence® Research (EIR), a subsidiary of Enverus, the most trusted energy-dedicated SaaS company that leverages Generative AI across its solutions, has released a series of reports focused on long-term hourly load profiles across the Lower 48 states and how exponential load drivers will impact power demand forecasts from 2025 to 2050.

“In our base-case scenario, we project average U.S. load growth of 13.8% by 2035 and 34.4% by 2050, largely driven by surging data center demand and electric vehicle adoption,” said Kevin Kang, senior analyst at Enverus. “To capture the uncertainty around these drivers, we model five scenarios that highlight both upside and downside risks.”

“Our forecast diverges most from the published projections of ERCOT and PJM,” Kang continued. “By contrast, other ISOs fall closer to our scenario ranges: ISONE aligns with our extreme low case, SPP with our realistic low, CAISO with our realistic high, and both NYISO and MISO are slightly higher than even our extreme high case.”

“ERCOT’s and PJM’s estimates imply that each of the next five years, their regions alone would absorb more than 100% of U.S. annual data center capital spending—an assumption we believe is unrealistic,” Kang said.

Key takeaways from the report:

  • In our base-case scenario, EIR projects average load growth of 13.8% by 2035 and 34.4% by 2050, primarily driven by rising data center demand and EV adoption.

  • To capture uncertainty, EIR developed five scenarios that bracket both upside and downside risks. These extreme cases outline potential ranges of -3.0% to +5.3% by 2035 and -9.4% to +22.6% by 2050 around our central outlook.

  • ERCOT assumes full execution of almost every announced hydrogen project; our analysis suggests 98.5% are likely to face delays or cancellations.

You must be an Enverus Intelligence® subscriber to access these reports.

About Enverus Intelligence® Research
Enverus Intelligence ® | Research, Inc. (EIR) is a subsidiary of Enverus that publishes energy-sector research focused on the oil, natural gas, power and renewable industries. EIR publishes reports including asset and company valuations, resource assessments, technical evaluations and macro-economic forecasts; and helps make intelligent connections for energy industry participants, service companies and capital providers worldwide. Enverus is the most trusted, energy-dedicated SaaS company, with a platform built to create value from generative AI, offering real-time access to analytics, insights and benchmark cost and revenue data sourced from our partnerships to 95% of U.S. energy producers, and more than 40,000 suppliers. Learn more at Enverus.com.

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