Biden administration plan could weaken Texas grid
Winter Storm Uri in 2021 was one of the worst disasters our state had seen in generations. Millions were left without heat amid record-low temperatures. Frozen pipes led to widespread water shortages. Hundreds of lives were lost.
Now, there are fresh warnings that Texas could see blackouts again this winter. That is why mounting concerns about the strength of our electric grid should warrant a reassessment of the Biden administration’s proposed plan to shut down reliable coal and natural gasfired power plants.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. recently released its Winter Reliability Assessment, which warned that “much of North America is at an elevated risk of insufficient energy supplies this winter and is highly exposed to risks of energy emergencies in extreme winter conditions.”
NERC found that for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which manages power supply to around 26 million customers, the “risk of a significant number of generator forced outages in extreme and prolonged cold temperatures continues to threaten reliability.”
The impact of El Niño-related weather patterns could further exacerbate the strain.
NERC’S forecast was front and center at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s, or FERC, annual reliability technical conference Nov. 9. FERC, the agency charged with ensuring the nation’s grid reliability, took aim at new emissions rules the Biden administration has proposed.
These rules hinge on hydrogen and carbon capture storage technologies, or CCS, that are, contrary to the Environmental Protection Agency’s claim, far from proven and not yet commercially available, as a letter sent to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and 38 of his Senate colleagues made clear.
“Today, CCS is not commercially operational for any coal or natural gas plant in the United States,” the letter states. “We have serious concerns about our electric reliability if the proposed rule is finalized resulting in shutdowns of the affordable, reliable baseload electricity powering our nation.”
House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee
are also raising the alarm.
“If we continue to retire and force the closure of dispatchable electric generation — like coal, natural gas, and nuclear — and fail to replace it with comparable dispatchable generation, the instability and precariousness of the U.S. electric grid will increase,” the members wrote in a separate letter to FERC.
There are signs the Biden administration may be heeding the warnings. At the FERC conference, Joseph Goffman, the Biden administration’s political choice to lead the EPA’S air office, acknowledged the reliability concerns.
“We’re in the fifth inning of the process,” he said. “There’s still a lot of work we must do on the path to finalizing the rule.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that Texas is already increasing electricity use at historic rates, with sales growing at five times the national rate for the past decade. The Biden administration’s proposed emissions regulations will set us on a path to even more grid instability at a time of rapidly growing demand.
The 2021 energy crisis was a stark reminder that a blackout is not simply an inconvenience, it can be a matter of life or death. The Biden administration needs to follow through and make needed changes to the EPA’S proposal to protect the long-term strength and reliability of the electric grid, and the millions of Americans whose lives depend on it.