The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a suite of biting regulations last year aimed at cutting emissions from the nation’s power plants. Before implementing the rules, the agency said it would listen closely to feedback from the nation’s utilities, grid operators and grid reliability regulators.
The EPA got plenty of it. What EPA heard repeatedly was that its proposed rules — which would wipe out the nation’s coal fleet by 2032 and make it impossible to build new baseload natural gas plants — were a recipe for disaster.
The message was clear: The United States was already bungling its energy transition. Essential on-demand power plants were being forced off the grid too quickly while replacement generating capacity and infrastructure weren’t coming online nearly fast enough. Grid operators begged for increased flexibility and rules that better reflected on-the-ground reality. From one region of the country to the next, they warned of power supply shortfalls by the close of the decade.
While the EPA listened, another new dynamic emerged. Power demand — which had been flat for more than a decade — began to soar. Rapid additions of energy-hungry data centers, huge manufacturing facilities cranking out semiconductors and batteries, and the rapid uptake of electric vehicles started to send power demand skyward. The challenge of managing America’s energy transition had suddenly become doubly difficult.
In Virginia, for example, one of the epicenters of the data center frenzy, the state’s largest utility warned that power demand would increase 85 percent in the next 15 years. In California, power demand is expected to jump 70 percent in the next 20 years. And a New York grid operator warned of a doubling of power demand by 2050.
The era of flat power demand had come to a decisive end, replaced by an enormous new appetite for electricity.
To put an exclamation mark on the challenges facing America’s power supply, the nation’s grid reliability regulator — the North American Electricity Reliability Corp. (NERC) — issued a deeply sobering report. NERC found that the collision of soaring power demand and the rapid loss of baseload power plants — namely the coal fleet — would push the nation into a full-blown grid reliability crisis. By 2030, two-thirds of the country will be at high risk of blackouts during periods of peak demand.
When the EPA was presented with this information, it merely shrugged.
The EPA has finalized its rules. Instead of providing increased flexibility — or dropping unworkable mandates — the agency has made some of the rules tougher.
Americans have been left with a plan to tear down the coal fleet nearly overnight without a plan to replace it, much less meet soaring new power demand.
While the EPA’s regulatory assault will face litigation and likely be struck down by the courts for regulatory overreach, immense damage has already been done.
By hijacking the nation’s energy policy in the most irresponsible ways, the EPA has publicly and forcefully disregarded the longstanding practice of ensuring affordable, reliable power.
We must put the nation’s energy experts and the people in charge of keeping the lights on back in the driver’s seat. Americans deserve far better than a future of electricity rationing and blackouts.
Reprinted with permission from DC Journal by Terry M. Jarrett.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Again, the Leftist agenda is being adhered to no matter what the cost to the country, the economy, and its citizens. Despite the lessons and many errors of Europe’s march to energy disaster, this nation is going down the same street. Vote in the same imbeciles and it will continue on to the final destruction of our nation.
The EPA has grown into an over reaching bully to America’s ability to manufacture anything and now it is hell bent on screwing up America’s fuel sources and the availability of electrical power. Why is there no cap on what the EPA, OSHA and many other agencies are allowed to do? Does our government have no control?
The EPA makes George III look positively pro liberty. The current U.S. government is worse than Ol’ George ever was!
Just shows the wizards of smart don’t know what is going on in the REAL WORLD.
I feel like I’m living Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in real-time.
It is time to eliminate the EPA and other bully agencies that do not have to answer to our representatives in government.
you cant have prosperity W/O affordable & reliable energy
The grid is already in trouble.
What is even more outrageous is that the EPA claims that it is the utility providers who are causing the increased cost to consumers even though their “push/demand” to provide the power needed to equal the current demand is not adequate to meet current needs. But we consumers are told that to be energy efficient we need to plan to only consume 25% of our current usage, or they will cut off/ ration when we get energy for our needs. It is a –Do as I say Move or else–
The elitists want us plebes to all be ensconced in tiny cubicles within 5 minute cities, heavily or completely censored and by God, in time they will propagandize us into enjoying living like a chicken. Even those with paid off mortgages are now facing confiscatory insurance rates, unreal and ever growing property taxes so as to make our youth even more stupid than the educational system has already managed. Oh and now lately the talk of carbon taxes are coming up which will deeply effect, perhaps terminally effect everyone living outside the disastrous large towns and cities the good ole government has “managed”.
We are cattle awaiting slaughter.
Another example of the motto (and holy mantra) of the left, their toadies, their psychophants and other libtard adherents: “We will snatch DEFEAT out of the Jaws of Victory!”
Also know as the “King Midas in Reverse” syndrome — whatever they touch, instantly turns into a “Brown Tide!” (AKA a tsunami of poo).
where are the lawsuits??
How about that new data center in Racine Wisconsin can ONLY use green energy to function..that will do it.
Eliminate the EPA.
EPA needs to disband or else get some real thinkers in there, who care about Americans. Health issues of the sick and elderly are being jeporadized by these Leftists. I guess they really are trying to have a sanctioned genocide of the elderly and those in ill health. Sounds like Nazism at work again. The elderly need to have the AC in the hot weather and the warmth in the cold weather. We pay our bills just like everyone else. I can hardly wiat until these people get to be the new elderly with health issues and see how they like these green energy rules and regs.
The EPA needs to abolished as a domestic terrorist organization. They are nothing but an active arm of the Democrat Marxist liberals that want to destroy this country.
I’m for clean water, clean air and recycling is a good practice but I’m not for an over reaching out of control EPA. Dismantle the current EPA, Congress needs to stop funding their budget
The Nov. election can’t come quick enough. Time to put
the adults back in charge.
I’ve been in the culture change field for over 50 years. The focus of my program is on identifying how group norms determine how things really happen in the workplace versus how they are supposed to happen. About 15 years ago, while presenting a program for an agency in the federal government, an employee raised his hand and said, “We have a norm in the federal government, that around here, if it ain’t broke, we’ll fix it until it is.” The room erupted in laughter and total agreement. Sadly, that norm is alive and doing well in the present administration’s policies. They “fixed” our border, and here we go again…
Appears we already have “artificial” intelligence in government
Well that is icing on the Biden cake. Should anyone have a doubt about the caliber of people at the helm this future will make it clear. No doubt the data centers and manufacturing plants will get priority. Electric cars being shoved down our collective throats will not, nor will our household power. Tax payers will be on the short end of the stick.
The left ruins everything it touches.
I am not surprised at the final solution a d demands of the EPA They have gone far left in their thinking. Get ready . It is too bad that some of our governmental agencies are so shortsightedIt will hurt us all.
Good ole EPA. Formed under our 2nd. worst president. Kyle L.
Correct. Just wate till a few thousand people freeze to death one winter. Jan. 6 wont be nothing ,compar4d to whats comning. O ptrecious govt. save us. Kyle l.
Amazing once again you can tell Obama is running this country , when Obama in the white house if it wasn’t broke he would change the policy to where it would break and most everything he did had no commen since . Well guess what? We are going thru that again with Biden being Obama puppet Obama is doin it again only in full force this time around . This whole country has become a comedy show because of it , and this time he’s trying to take the world with him.
This is what we get when we vote in politions that have no successful business experience! Do you see Ford, Chrysler, or General Motors hiring a president with no successful experienc?
Short and sweet. The left hand doesn’t give a hoot, to what the right hand needs. It’s broken, but needs be damned, follow the rules. Worry about ramifications another day.
This is step one of the Left’s plan to foment the uprising of the middle class and out is on the path to universal Socialism, just as laid out by Marx!
Congress does not have authority by the Constitution to let the President, departments, or agencies to their own rule making. Some one has to stand up and say it is all unconstitutional in public.
So basically the people making the rules are either idiots or evil or both.