The Environmental Protection Agency’s new Clean Power Plan 2.0 was recently finalized, and it’s being met with a lot of criticism over its emphasis on net-zero emissions at the expense of grid reliability. In fact, some experts believe the EPA is engineering the power grid to fail with the new rule.
It requires that all existing coal power plants and new natural gas power plants install emissions control technologies that are not yet considered viable, and those that fail to comply could be closed permanently. The EPA says the move is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by the year 2032, but those in the energy industry say that it is a highly unrealistic mandate.
Naturally, regulations that are bad for energy companies tend to be bad for consumers as well. In this case, the result would be significant grid instability as operators are strong-armed into adopting unreliable, expensive and intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind. Even the Department of Energy admits that wind is dependable for only around a third of the year and solar energy is reliable for just under a quarter of the time.
In addition, the generation of wind energy is on the decline. Last year, wind generation reached maturity with wind speeds that were much slower than those in the past despite an increase in wind capacity of 6.2 gigawatts.
It wasn't a good year for solar energy, either, with rising electricity rates and more than 100 companies going bankrupt in 2023. Several solar plants that are already in the works, some of which received subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act, are expected to be cancelled soon because of reduced demand and price collapse.
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Lawmakers warn that new rules could leave America in the dark
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington) released a joint statement with Critical Materials Subcommittee Chair Buddy Carter (R-Georgia) denouncing the new rules, cautioning: “At a time when more than half the nation is at elevated risk of forced blackouts, the administration’s unrelenting rush-to-green agenda is shutting down the types of generation needed to keep the lights on and raising costs across the board.”
The Long-Term Assessment report released in December by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation cautioned that CPP 2.0 and similarly rigid policies could drive generators to close down their plants, resulting in widespread electric reliability issues. This is also something that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s James Danly warned the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about in a hearing, saying that “there is a looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.”
A similar warning came from FERC Commissioner Mark Christie, who asserted: “The United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.”
In other words, without greater capacity from baseload sources, a reliance on intermittent sources of energy could lead to catastrophes ranging from commerce interruptions to the loss of human life.
According to RealClearEnergy, the carbon capture and storage measures mandated by CPP 2.0 could lead to reductions of more than 14 percent in natural gas plant efficiency, while those that are retrofitted with the technology can expect an increase in electricity costs of as much as 80 percent.
The measure also ignores the fact that America now boasts very effective emissions technologies that allow coal plants to operate in a much more environmentally friendly manner than in the past. This is evidenced by the lack of air quality issues in states that still heavily depend on coal compared to places that also rely on coal but have not implemented these measures, such as India and China.
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