Hi, I'm Denise, and this is your civic minute.
When gas prices spike, most people notice at the pump.
What they don't notice is what happens to the electricity
coming out of their wall.
Power plants are dispatched in order of cost,
cheap as first.
And when natural gas is cheap, gas plants run.
When gas prices rise, coal becomes the cheaper option
and utility switch.
In 2025, coal consumption in the power sector
jumped 9% the first increase in years
driven by higher gas prices and rising demand for data centers.
Wisconsin still gets about 30% of its electricity from coal.
All of it imported mostly by rail from Wyoming.
The state has no coal of its own, so when gas prices spike,
Wisconsin doesn't just pay more for energy.
It burns more of someone else's coal to make it.
Higher prices and dirtier power at the same time.
That's the part of fossil fuel dependence most people never see.
That's your civic minute by more at civicmedia.us.