This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 1, 2026.

What happened the last time you flipped a light switch? The lights came on, right?

One of the electricity grid managers responsible for keeping the lights on has an urgent message: Current and future demand for electricity will eclipse our ability to generate power. This could lead to “catastrophic failure.” Michigan policymakers should take note.

PJM is the country’s oldest and largest regional transmission organization. It coordinates the movement of electricity for 67 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia. Most of Michigan is served by a different regional grid operator, but PJM’s warning illustrates the problem facing electric grids across the country.

Getting electricity to your home involves many actors, including generators, regulators and utilities. It also involves a complex system of power plants, transmission lines and storage.

The price of electricity is subject to supply and demand, just like anything else that is sold. But because we need a continuous supply of power, it requires careful forecasting.

Regional transmission organizations like PJM help with grid reliability — they work to ensure there’s always enough juice to meet demand. PJM also runs a wholesale market so power producers can sell electricity to state utilities.

In May, PJM issued a dire report about the future of electricity markets. Electricity demand is surging and is expected to rise, driven in part by data centers. Power plant construction is more time consuming and costly than ever before, thanks to supply chain and permitting delays. States are retiring coal and nuclear power plants, and they’re not building fast enough to replace the lost capacity. All these trends make it harder to attract capital investment in the energy industry.

“The result,” says the PJM report, “is a transition from an era of managing surplus to an era of managing scarcity.”

David Mills is president and CEO of PJM. He wrote a cover letter for the May report in which he used stark language — not the sort of messaging you normally see from corporate leaders.

“Conditions that made the market work for nearly two decades have changed,” wrote Mills.

PJM outlined several scenarios to address this crisis. Options include paying more up front to finance new power generation, deciding who gets electricity based on geography and the type of customer, or fundamentally changing how power producers are paid.

The energy industry has spent decades building the grid so that energy shortages are extremely rare. The goal is that involuntary blackouts should happen no more than once in 10 years.

As PJM wrote: “If the ship sinks, it sinks for everyone, regardless of who bought a ticket.”

Michigan should not wait for an energy shortage to force tough choices. The state needs to generate more power. The Legislature and our next governor should start by reversing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s 2023 clean energy legislation, which shifts Michigan away from cheap and reliable electricity.

What do you do when the lights don’t come on?

We don’t want to find out.

“The current situation is not tenable,” said Mills. “The region has years, not decades, to make these choices deliberately.”

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.