Tag Archives: natural gas plants

EPA’s Clean Power Plan Rule Prioritizes Net-Zero Over Grid Reliability

From Watts Up With That?

By Gabriella Hoffman Christian Palich

Coal and natural gas plants provide 60% of the U.S.’ affordable, reliable, and baseload power. In a time of increased electricity demand, America needs to double down on harnessing these sources—not abandon them.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s recently finalized Clean Power Plan 2.0 (CPP) rule, however, takes the country in the wrong direction. Under this regulation, one that is arguably illegal, existing coal and new natural gas power plants will be mandated to install emissions control technologies that aren’t yet commercially viable. Plants that don’t comply risk permanent closure. This unrealistic mandate is advanced under the guise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 90% by 2032.

The Biden administration should nix this rule altogether given its many drawbacks to the American economy, all of which come with no environmental gain and are based on dubious authority. If it doesn’t reverse course, a forthcoming Congressional resolution of disapproval and newly-filed lawsuits could stop overreach here.

The EPA’s limited authority over-regulating greenhouse gas emissions was affirmed in the landmark June 2022 West Virginia vs. EPA decision. That case challenged the original Obama-era Clean Power Plan, and the Supreme Court ruled the EPA lacked the statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. No change has been made to grant the EPA more authority over greenhouse gasses.

Moreover, the Clean Air Act says the EPA must craft achievable emission limitations standards that have been “adequately demonstrated.” Yet, the Carbon Capture technology that would be relied upon under this rule has never been “adequately demonstrated” on the scale that EPA is attempting to require.

The EPA rule would lead to grid instability because operators will be forced to adopt intermittent, unreliable, and costly sources like wind and solar. According to the Department of Energy, wind is only reliable 33.5% of the year while solar is dependable for just 24.9% of the time. Wind energy generation decreased for the first time last year. The federal government reports wind generation hit maturity with slower recorded wind speeds, despite adding 6.2 gigawatts of new wind capacity. Solar energy also had a bad 2023 with over 100 companies going bankrupt and expensive electricity rates. Many planned solar plants, including those receiving Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, are predicted to be canceled this year due to price collapse and waning demand.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warned in its December 2023 Long-Term Assessment report that rigid policies like CPP 2.0 “have the potential to influence generators” to close down their plants. The risk of massive electric reliability issues across the country is by no means a political talking point. In 2023, FERC Commissioner Danly stated in a hearing to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that “there is a looming reliability crisis in our electricity markets.” In that same hearing, Commissioner Christie said “The United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.” These are the experts sounding the alarm that we need more grid capacity from baseload sources, not intermittent ones, or we could face not just loss of commerce but a loss of human life.

CPP 2.0 promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2032 by mandating coal and natural gas plants install carbon capture and storage (CCS) or face closure. But the EPA is downplaying the nascent technology’s shortcomings.

CCS, as it stands, is expensive and will diminish coal and natural gas plant efficiency by at least 14%. Moreover, natural gas and coal plants retrofitted with first-generation carbon capture technology reportedly can expect a 50% and 70 to 80% increase in electricity costs, respectively.

In the U.S., we already have highly effective emissions technology that enables coal plants to run in an incredibly environmental way. For example, just look at how states that rely heavily on coal have almost none of the air quality issues of China or India. That’s because of our emissions control technologies.

Let’s call this rule out for what it really is: It’s a vehicle to punish coal country which has left the president’s party in droves over the last 20 years, in favor of radical environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) donors who are a major constituency of this administration.

The finalized Clean Power Plan 2.0 rule is a bad deal for American energy producers and consumers. Congress should immediately pull the plug on this rule.

Gabriella Hoffman is director of Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation (iwf.org/CEC) and host of the District of Conservation podcast.

Christian Palich is Vice President of Government & External Affairs at Eagle Forge Services Company, one of the nation’s largest coal producers and a board advisory member for IWF’s Center for Energy and Conservation.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Virginia needs natural gas

 From CFACT

By Craig Rucker 

Virginia stands at an energy crossroads.

Governor Glenn Youngkin and the Virginia Air Pollution Board have wisely taken steps to protect Virginia’s future energy needs by withdrawing from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).  The usual suspects have brought a lawsuit in an attempt to stop them.

There is more to it than that.

Dominion Energy has acknowledged that wind and solar projects are insufficient to keep Virginia’s lights on and has requested that natural gas plants and modular nuclear reactors be built as backup. CFACT delivered written testimony to the State Corporation Commission in support of Dominion’s plan, urging them to go further still by making natural gas the primary instead of the backup power source of electricity generation.

Read CFACT’s full submission at CFACT.org.

A Dominion spokesman conceded in an email that “renewables alone cannot reliably serve the unprecedented growth in customer demand expected over the next 15 years.”

If cutting greenhouse gas emissions is your thing, natural gas should be your hero. America’s ample supply of low-emissions, domestically produced natural gas permitted the U.S. to dramatically reduce its emissions as the rest of the world, including Europe, flatlined or increased.

Mathematician David Wojick did a brilliant job in CFACT’s submission of crunching the numbers that prove how crucial it is to Virginia to secure reliable power.

Central to Wojick’s thesis is that wind and solar are intermittent sources of power, and the infrastructure to store the energy they produce is prohibitively expensive, does not exist, and is not about to.

“Consider the simple case of a 12-hour night with low wind fulfilling that load.” CFACT’s submission explains, “The storage requirement is 60,000 MWh, over six times the proposed storage capacity. Even if the batteries had a 10-hour capacity, they would not come close to meeting the need… Even worse, this simple case is far from the worst likely to occur. Multiple cloudy, hot and cold days with low wind are common in Virginia. Detailed historical analysis will be needed to estimate the likely maximum required storage capacity correctly, and it will certainly be in the hundreds of thousands of MWh. Even assuming huge battery price reductions, this much storage would be prohibitively expensive. Gas-fired backup power is a better option.”

Wojick then leads CFACT’s submission to a more powerful conclusion, “Instead of building new gas-fired generating capacity to backup renewables, it will be far more cost-effective to use gas as a primary energy source. Having gas capacity sit idle simply because the wind is blowing or the sun is shining for part of the day is redundant and expensive.”

Read CFACT’s excellent submission in support of natural gas for Virginia.

Natural gas and nuclear power plants cannot be quickly turned off and on like a light switch.  The power grid is undependable without them.  The generating plants must, therefore, operate continually.

The smartest move is to cut the redundant and unreliable wind and solar out of the picture and use what works.

Author

Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.