ASCE’s 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, officially released in March, gave the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of C. This is the highest grade ever awarded since the Report Card was first created in 1998. Since the last report in 2021, eight critical infrastructure categories improved. However, the grades in two categories decreased, including that of energy, which fell from a C- four years ago to a D+ today.
In this ASCE Interchange Live, Michael Miller, vice president of engineering services at Exo, discusses how civil engineers can raise the grade for America’s energy infrastructure based on the findings in the 2025 report card. Miller is also a member of ASCE’s Committee on America's Infrastructure and worked on the energy category of the Report Card.
“The power system today has a tremendous spike in demand for power. Mainly coming from data centers, AI centers, and some cryptocurrency. All these require a lot of power,” said Miller. “Over the last 20 years, [we’ve seen] a pretty steady increase in demand until the last three or four years, when we’ve seen a sharp rise in power requirements.”
While data centers and similar systems affect the energy demand, that’s only one side of the equation. Capacity constraints are impacting the equally important supply side.
“The generation side also has to be beefed up. So we are scrambling – and that’s a pretty good word for it – to bring on more generation faster. And that can be renewable generation, solar, wind, gas power generation, combined-cycle gas plants, and nuclear. All the generation sources that are being put on are creating a bottleneck in that integration.”
The integration of generation can take anywhere from one to three years depending on its complexity. The combination of this with an increasing power demand can lead to major stability problems in a system that needs to always remain stable.
Miller also discusses how recent legislation, such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, have impacted the energy sector. With these new laws in place, he explains how civil engineers can help raise infrastructure grades at the state and national levels.
Read more about the 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure and the energy category. Grades for 17 additional infrastructure categories can also be explored within the Report Card.
To view all ASCE Interchange episodes, visit ASCE’s YouTube channel.
