Columnist Rich Nolan sums up the current energy situation perfectly:
The nation’s electric grid experts and operators now work in a constant state of emergency. There’s little if any respite in the change of seasons. Fears of soaring electricity demand overwhelming power supplies during searing summer heat are now matched by an equally unnerving fear millions will be left shivering in darkness during the coldest days of winter.
The question is no longer will there be rolling blackouts or grid emergencies but rather when or where.
This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is taking up the issue of grid reliability at a technical conference, pulling together some of the nation’s key stakeholders on the issue. This is an extraordinarily important opportunity to shed light on a catastrophe in the making and the policy decisions driving it.
Warnings over the threat posed by the loss of dispatchable sources of generation – namely fuel-secure coal power – have reached a crescendo over the past few months. And while the experts charged with keeping the heat and lights on have begged for policy relief, they’re getting just the opposite.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory agenda is making an alarmingly dangerous situation all but untenable.
I don’t know when our beloved government decided that electricity had somehow become an optional extra in our daily life, but they need to have the proverbial (battery-powered) cattle prod applied to their genitals, and soon.
We should start with the EPA, who need to experience a 90% RIF immediately, and a concomitant 90% reduction in their “regulatory agenda” — slashing the existing regulations, to start with — and daily budget cuts from a hostile Congress.
I know, I know: the entire fucking Feddle Gummint needs the same, but let’s start small with the EPA (and, okay okay, the ATF as well).
But we need to stop being fearful about our energy needs, toot sweet, and if the existing electricity providers are being hampered, the reasons for said hampering need to be eliminated before we start having Third World problems of rolling blackouts and “load shedding”.
And by “eliminating” I mean this:
And why is nobody building new power stations?
Because laws require that the EPA (among many many others) grant approval.
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And the first line of the 3rd paragraph is important: “This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is taking up the issue of grid reliability”. For decades now the power utiilities have neglected their transmission and distribution networks – the grid – because a) those power plants are expensive and they want to pay off those before they sink money into the grid, and b) they like their profits.
Throw in the EPA and their onerous demands, ratcheting tighter every year and you’ve got distasters in the making. I second Kim’s motion!
This summer I drove past a newly shuttered 2.2 GW coal fired power plant. Nothing wrong with it other than it burned coal.
Over the past 10 years more than 100 gigawatts of coal fired generation capacity has been forcibly removed from the grid with no reliable replacement.
Voodoo energy can never meet the needs of the baseload.
Perhaps if rolling blackouts are needed they should start by cutting off all the gas and electricity to all Federal Gov’t buildings.
Yeah, that’ll happen.
Same here, or worse.
This morning in the paper: Electricity network owner has told the city I live in that as of immediate no new connections to buildings will be allowed, even buildings that are already standing or under construction. This situation to last until probably at least 2029.
The transmission line network can’t handle the load, and government regulations make expansion of the network impossible (the government has decided that by 2025 the demand for electricity will be half of what it was in 1995, so by their wishful thinking the network is far over capacity, thus no new cables and transformers are needed and they refuse to allow new construction. The same government that mandates cities to build tens of thousands of new houses to house migrants).
No doubt TPTB in your area have grandfathered or otherwise insured themselves from the consequences of their eco-zealotry.
Around here, eco-zealots and other Leftists are giant hypocrites. A good start would be for the consequences of their actions to visit them personally. Something like the burned out traffic cameras in UK.