The State of Utility Planning, 2025 Q2

The RMI report 'The State of Utility Planning, 2025 Q2' analyzes integrated resource plans (IRPs) for electric utilities across the United States. It finds that utilities are increasingly projecting higher electricity demand and responding by expanding gas power plant capacity and delaying fossil fuel retirements, leading to a widening gap between projected emissions and net-zero climate targets.

• Electric utilities in the United States are projecting significant load growth through 2035, driven primarily by industrial loads like data centers, electric vehicle adoption, and electrification. As of the end of Q2 2025, IRPs anticipate load to grow 24 percent by 2035 compared to 2023 levels, a substantial increase from the 6 percent growth projected in January 2021.
• Utilities are increasingly relying on gas capacity to meet rising demand and reliability concerns, resulting in a shift where planned gas capacity now exceeds wind and solar capacity for 2035. Between 2023 and 2035, IRPs include 102 GW of gas additions and 258 GW of wind and solar additions; however, recent updates mean plans now include 53 GW more gas capacity than wind and solar capacity in 2035.
• There is a significant gap between projected utility emissions and the pathways required to reach net-zero by 2035, such as the IEA Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario. While the IEA NZE suggests the electricity sector reach net-zero by 2035, current IRP projections suggest emissions will only be reduced by 53 percent by 2035 compared to a 2005 baseline.
• Recent updates in Q2 2025 show a trend of increasing projected emissions and load. Utilities that updated their IRPs in this quarter increased projected load through 2035 by 2.0 percent and emissions by 4.5 percent. This marks the sixth consecutive quarter of at least a 2.7 percent increase in projected cumulative emissions among companies with updates.

APA

RMI (2025). The State of Utility Planning, 2025 Q2. https://rmi.org/resources/the-state-of-utility-planning-2025-q2/

Chicago

RMI. The State of Utility Planning, 2025 Q2. 2025. https://rmi.org/resources/the-state-of-utility-planning-2025-q2/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=The State of Utility Planning, 2025 Q2 |date=15 July 2025 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/the-state-of-utility-planning-2025-q2/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2025state, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{The State of Utility Planning, 2025 Q2}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2025}, month = jul, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/the-state-of-utility-planning-2025-q2/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }