The EPA’s plan to break the electricity grid

Via The Register-Herald:

Searing heat has pushed the U.S. power grid to the very limit this summer. The reliability of our power supply is hanging by a thread, with new power demand records set weekly. The nation’s top power reliability experts have repeatedly warned that we’re in a power supply crisis. But the Biden administration’s response — if you can call it that — is a proposal to eliminate the very power plants keeping the lights on.

The administration is bungling the energy transition with potentially horrific consequences. Instead of listening to the nation’s utilities, grid operators, and reliability experts on how to responsibly manage the pivot to renewable energy, the Biden team has turned the reins of the nation’s energy policy over to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). What’s now playing out is alarmingly dangerous and sadly predictable.

EPA is using every rule-making and regulation it can to put pressure on power plant owners and automakers to force a lightning fast pivot away from fossil fuels. The result is a blitz of rules that aims to wipe out the nation’s coal and natural gas fleets — which provide 60% of the nation’s power — while forcing an equally rapid transition to electric vehicles (EVs).

The EPA’s newest proposed rule aimed at tackling carbon emissions from the power sector — the so-called Clean Power Plan 2.0 — has drawn unprecedented concern from the very people charged with keeping the lights on and air conditioners running. The rule, which gives plant owners the false choice of installing unproven and exorbitantly expensive technology — or closing their plants to meet emissions reduction targets — is more than likely unlawful. What we know for certain is the energy crisis that it will invite.

In formal comments to the EPA, the nation’s utilities said the proposed rule will leave the grid short of power and should not be finalized in its current form. The nation’s electric co-ops told EPA the plan relies on “inadequately demonstrated technologies with unworkable timelines.” They added that the plan creates “direct threats to electric grid reliability.” The grid operators — who are tasked with making the entire electricity system work — told EPA the proposed rule will lead to “significant power shortages.”

This is the alarming bottom line: EPA has proposed tearing down the very foundation of the nation’s electricity system before replacement capacity is even close to filling the gaps. And this is happening at the exact moment electricity demand is surging from the adoption of EVs, the rapid addition of energy-hungry data centers, and the current bout of increasingly volatile weather. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that we’re going to need to double the nation’s generation capacity by 2050 just to keep up with soaring demand.

In its crusade to slash emissions, EPA is breaking the electricity grid. For dozens of cities like Phoenix, or Austin, Texas — which has seen more than a month straight of 100-degree temperatures — a heat wave coupled with a blackout could be catastrophic.

The obvious alternative to EPA’s extraordinarily dangerous plan is to focus on building and deploying new energy technologies and infrastructure before tearing down the power plants that currently underpin our system. That approach would provide reinforcements to America’s energy security instead of walking us ever closer to the edge.

Should American energy policy get this transition wrong, the consequences would be calamitous. When — not if — the lights go out, no one should be surprised, least of all the architects of this debacle at the Biden EPA.

See the article here.