Summer Talking Points: Unreliable Power
Don’t blame the climate for unreliable power, blame climate policies that shut down reliable power
This is Part 2 of a 4 part feature where I cover 4 of the top energy issues that will be discussed this summer, especially as politicians return home for August Recess.
Don’t blame the climate for unreliable power, blame climate policies that shut down reliable power.
In recent summers it’s become commonplace for Americans to experience electricity shortages, with calls to use less electricity and the frequent threat of brownouts or blackouts.
This is an embarrassment, and it was totally preventable.1Anti-fossil-fuel politicians will blame our grid’s reliability problems on “climate change,” which is supposedly making it too hot for a grid to operate.
This is absurd; countries with much hotter temperatures than ours, like Singapore, are easily able to have a reliable grid.2The real cause of reliable problems is the obvious: government-dictated “green energy” policies that punish reliable fossil fuels and nuclear, while privileging unreliable solar and wind.
Since at any given time solar and wind can go near zero, using them to replace reliable power doesn’t work. E.g., during February 2021’s winter storm, TX solar and wind were totally out to lunch—but they’d taken tens of $billions that could have gone to reliable, resilient power.3
The Biden-Harris EPA has been at war with reliable power plants, above all the coal plants that our grid depends on for 1/6th of its reliable power.
And they’re doing this while demand for power is increasing from data centers and EVs.The Biden-Harris EPA’s recent power plant rules will not only shut down vital coal power plants more quickly, they will also prevent new natural gas plants from replacing them.
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Very nice essay, sir. Thank you. A few comments:
Your first graphic shows "reliables" in 2021 vs. "reliables" in 2030, and indicates a 17 percent reduction in reliable energy over the course of the next 6 years or so. The graphic represents "coal retirements," but are other retirements included in that mix? For example, if the SLRs for several nuclear plants were NOT granted, nuclear retirements would also be occurring. And, there will be retirements of plants that are gas-fired as well (OPPD is planning one). How will those requirements affect the slope of that EPA line?
While it is interesting, that graphic could be far more powerful by adding the projected demand over that same period, and the capacity of renewables that would be required to meet that demand, absent scalable storage. Such a depiction would clearly show the magnitude of new capacity needed, and the importance of keeping what reliable capacity we have available now.
Oh, to be a grad student again...