Politico is one of the leftist news sites which has cheered all sorts of climate action. Funny how they suddenly realize that actions actually do have consequences
Challenge for Biden power rule: Keeping the lights on
(FYI: They changed the original headline to “Power grid can’t handle Biden’s climate rule, industry groups say”)
The Biden administration’s new greenhouse gas rule is designed to drive drastic changes in how U.S. power companies produce electricity — but utilities say it could escalate the risk of outages as it squeezes fossil fuel plants into retirement.
Power producers are already warning that the rule threatens to compromise the power network’s reliability by pushing their older, dirtier coal and gas plants into retirement at an even faster pace than they are closing now. They say it’s especially worrisome if the plants aren’t replaced as quickly as they shut down.
Power outages reached an all-time high in 2020 and are on the rise because of major climate-fueled weather disasters, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The average person went seven hours without power in 2021 compared with less than four hours in 2013.
Weather incidents are no worse now than they were in the past. What you have now, though, is more people, more buildings, more modern appliances, more things using electricity, but, less per capita electric generation, especially with Government doing away with reliable, affordable, dependable energy sources in favor on unreliable, more expensive “green” energy. There’s not enough being added to cover for what is being killed off. There were 109 nuclear plants in 1989. In 2020 there were 92, and more are being taken off-line. Extreme-enviros sue to block “green” energy projects. It’s a lot easier to have a small footprint/small height natural gas plant in the heartland than a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines which will be damaged by typical thunderstorms.
Meanwhile, the shift to electric vehicles and a push to switch other types of energy demand to electricity is expected to boost U.S. power consumption by 12 percent to 22 percent between 2021 and 2030, requiring a significant increase in generation capacity.
“We’ve already got reliability concerns,” said Todd Snitchler, president and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents power plant owners. He noted that many coal plants have already retired after the Obama administration released its never-enforced power plant climate rule in 2015 — and that Biden’s rule is also targeting gas-fired plants for steep pollution cuts.
“You don’t have anything today that can replace the gas that could retire,” Snitchler said.
Of course, Cultists say different
Former regulators, however, say those fears are overblown. Keeping the lights on can be compatible with lowering power grid emissions, they argue.
“There’s always ‘the sky is falling’ proclamation. Industry always says, ‘We can’t do it, there’s no way,’ and it’s always done,” said Richard Glick, a former Biden-era chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “It’s always done in a way that maintains reliability and also does it in a cost effective manner.”
In other words, you will be forced to use less electricity to cover for what is being lost. Hey, how’s California doing with their blackouts and brownouts? How many EU nations are having to turn the coal and nuclear back on because people are going into energy poverty? Because they are burning wood to keep warm?
It’s funny how the regulators accuse the producers of “sky is falling” proclamations, when they have been using their own “sky is falling” proclamations about climate for decades to justify their ridiculous regulations.
Teach the average age of an operating coal fired electric plant is 45 years old. They usually get a complete rebuild st 30yesrs then retirement st 50
Over 100 coal plants shut down in Trump’s 4 years. Accountants know that coal fired plants are more costly than renewables.and the price of renewables keeps going down.
Nukes? Most people don’t want them anyplace near them. Do you want BIG GOVERNMENT to begin cramming nukes down the throats of Americans? Even if we wanted them the designing of a new generation nuke would take at keast6 years. Then there is the permitting and the construction
The last nuke took 10 years to complete and it was already designed.
Cape/vineyard Wind is due to begin generation end of next year.
Storage? The end of the age of lithium batteries is on the horizon sodium and zinc will take over.
Weep for those poor kids mining cobalt in the Congo.
No never mind most cobalt isn’t used in batteries, they will still have jobs and food to eat
You want to cover the country with windmills? The typical windmill is 3.5 MW. You can’t improve them, because wind at a given speed contains only so much energy, and physics will only allow you to extract a percentage of that. (47%, I think) So to replace a single 1000 MW plant. Do the math. That’s like 300 under ideal conditions. Real World it’s like 800. My home state of Michigan has the equivalent of about 17 such plants. I don’t want 6600 windmills covering my state. The fact that “renewables” are cheaper is irrelevant if they don’t work.
Biden is a fossil, needs a jolt of electricity every day to wake up, the Frankenstein monster has more awareness.
Coal is stored energy from the sun. It has potential. You can burn coal to heat your home, an old octopus coal-burning furnace was at the home I grew up in.
You fill the coal bin just before winter starts, you feed the firebox ten pounds of coal chunks, start it on fire and you then have usable energy in the form of heat trapped inside a house.
Coal can be used to boil water and heat a steam turbine to generate electricity. The most desired usable energy ever.
That is why coal is used to generate electricity, everybody wants electricity.
You cry like a baby when it is gone for half an hour.
Of course, you can use a radioactive isotope of cesium and power a space craft one hundred times further than conventional rocket fuels.
Paul Brown figured out how to control nuclear spent fuels.
A rare element in coal is uranium.
Coal is a good place to start. James Watt did some important work with coal and steam engines.
Give coal a break, coal matters.
Our esteemed host noted:
Can’t have the headline tell us too much of the truth!