Nick Pope
Contributor
The Biden-Harris administration says that its stringent power plant rules won’t harm long-term power reliability, but four grid operators stated the exact opposite in a legal brief filed Friday.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its aggressive emissions rules for America’s power plants in April, saying at the time that the regulations would “improve public health without disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity.” However, four major regional grid operators argued the exact opposite in an amicus brief filed in support of red states’ legal challenge against the rule, stating explicitly that the rules will jeopardize Americans’ ability to reliably secure sufficient amounts of power if they are enforced as is.
“Their proffered brief outlines in detail that without additional modification, the compliance timelines and related provisions of the Rule are not workable and are destined to trigger an acceleration in the pace of premature retirements of electric generation units that possess critical reliability attributes at the very time when such generation is needed to support ever-increasing electricity demand because of the growth of the digital economy and the need to ensure adequate back-up generation to support an increasing amount of intermittent renewable generation,” the grid operators wrote in their amicus brief. “Such inevitable and foreseeable premature retirement decisions resulting from the Rule’s timelines will substantially strain each of the Joint [independent system operators’] / [regional transmission organizations’] ability to maintain the reliability of the electric power grid to meet the needs of the citizenry and the country’s economy.” (RELATED: Grid Operator Warns Dems’ Climate Agenda Is Pushing Populous Blue State Toward Blackouts)
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), PJM, Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) teamed up to file the brief. The four operators serve a combined 156 million customers, according to the brief’s text.
Specifically, the EPA’s rules will mandate existing coal plants to harness 90% of their emissions by 2032 if they want to stay open past 2039, and they will also require new natural gas-fired plants to do the same in order to stay open past 2039, according to the agency. The EPA is essentially requiring power plants to meet those emissions cuts using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, which the four grid operators contend is too expensive and unproven to be mandated on such a tight timeline.
The EPA’s finding that CCS is the “best system of emissions reduction” is also questionable, and that the compliance deadlines that come from that determination “are based on overly ambitious and inadequately supported assumptions as to target dates for commercialization of CCS,” the grid operators argued in their brief. “Those [best system of emissions reduction] determinations then drive both the rate and timing of compliance which, in turn, will drive the premature retirements of generation sources that will threaten the reliability of the electric grid even before the compliance date in the Rule.”
The claims made by the grid operators in their brief are completely at odds with what EPA has said about its rules.
“Today, April 25, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a suite of final rules to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants in order to protect all communities from pollution and improve public health without disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity,” the EPA said on the day it unveiled the final regulations. “These rules, finalized under separate authorities including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, will significantly reduce climate, air, water, and land pollution from the power sector, delivering on the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to protect public health, advance environmental justice, and confront the climate crisis.”
Grid experts have similarly cautioned that the EPA’s rules will undermine power reliability at a time when electricity demand is expected to substantially increase due to de facto electric vehicle (EV) mandates and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Mark Christie has also raised the alarm about the possibility of an acute power crisis hitting the country in the near future as demand is driven up and reliable supply is retired without enough adequate, reliable capacity coming online to offset those subtractions.
The EPA did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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If you have the means, make your own electricity. At least you can avoid the immediate impact of grid collapse.
All grids were set into a fatal spin once non-dispatchable generators were favoured over dispatchable generators. At present, the consequent is rampant inflation as electricity runs modern economies and expensive efforts are being made to keep the power flowing.
I do not think the madness will end until there is full grid collapse. No engineer wants to tell the fanatic that controls their income that what they are hoping to do can never work.
USA enjoyed a 4 year pause due to Trump. Meanwhile Australia, UK, EU and some US States have maintained the insanity. If Trupm does not get a second term, then USA will head faster into the abyss.
Excellent comments, Rick.
Let’s hope we get another four year pause in January with a re-elected President Trump.
Trump has a lot of radical Democrat damage to undo, all across the government.
What a disaster the radical Democrats are !
They, and their insane policies are in the process of destroying the United States.
Don’t vote for Democrats if you value your freedoms and love your country.
Everything is insane. Might as well enjoy it. I was wondering, what is the best wine pairing for cat?
Chateau Petrus (pet-r-us) is best with cat (chat), if you can afford it.
Looks nice. I guess asking its price would be in poor taste.
In any case, I thought that Kamala being a raging alcoholic, probably has a strong opinion. “White, no red, no…”
A very slightly sweet Rosé. One doesn’t want to overpower the delicate flavor.
Mad Dog 2020
And in large quantities prior to ingestion.
I think a red. I’ve haven’t eaten a little cat, but being carnivores I think they would be about the same as cougar.
Depends how it’s cooked. Syrah for ‘liver & onions’ style cat.
Then again, if you opt for raw, you’ll likely want a dry white.
Wouldn’t that be “MUSCAT.”
I do not think the madness will end until there is full grid collapse.
Full grid collapse isn’t a bug, it’s the goal…
“If you have the means, make your own electricity. At least you can avoid the immediate impact of grid collapse.”
The first part of the above is possible for a tiny percentage of home-owners. Second part is not true because once a person leaves their driveway the impacts of grid collapse will be trouble for every part of the social/economic system. For example, as soon as the grocery store stand-by generators run out of fuel the ice cream softens and melts. 😡
ice cream will be on sale ++
https://youtu.be/8W3puhJiGGE
always look on the bright side.
Meaningful action tends to reactionary so we’ll have to wait until the first city goes cold and dark.
Driving home in Houston today it was in the high 90s (Farenheit). It is the heat that will kill us.
That hot? Even in the summer? Unheard of. (-;
“”‘Inevitable And Foreseeable’””
A very slow car crash. And in our case we have a complete non-driver behind the wheel. What could go right? The new angle on energy and de-industrialisation is…. “national security” (doublethink is essential here).
“”Ed Miliband brands renewable energy transition a ‘national security fight’ against nimbys
Britain’s transition to renewable energy is the “economic justice, energy security and national security fight of our time”, Ed Miliband has said””.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ed-miliband-brands-renewable-energy-transition-a-national-security-fight-against-nimbys/ar-AA1qIpKu
In reality we could be energy self-sufficient – ie nationally secure. But no, apparently our national security depends upon more wind and solar, closing all oil, gas and coal operations and importing it [from some nasty places and people] instead.
The Nimbys have every right minded person’s support in averting the total desecration and ruination of our green and pleasant land.
You can BET there are no wind turdines near Milibrain’s house. !!
Not in his back yard !!
Well, he lives in leafy Islington in North London. No chance of anything untoward there, it’s a built up posh suburb.
So lots of lawn space for solar panels, once you chop down some trees.
And close to users.
Is Miliband the one with two kitchens?
Yes!
The Labour Dictators rear their ugly heads!
Are the Labour Dictators going to have their way until 2029?
Insane people like the Labour Dictaros can do a lot of damage in five years.
They’re milking it for all it’s worth. Fighting like ferrets in a sack over who gets which grace and favour country residence etc. Meanwhile when it comes to freebies, two-tier leaves them all in the shade. Lord pockets Free wardrobes (his and hers), glasses, tickets to football, Coldplay, Swifty etc etc etc.
And the little people?
“”Starmer’s popularity is in freefall””
https://order-order.com/2024/09/17/labours-popularity-crashes-in-record-time/
“”Lammy has delivered his first major speech as Foreign Secretary…on climate change. Lammy declared the “climate emergency” the “most profound and universal source of global disorder”, posing a “more fundamental” threat to the world than terrorism or autocrats.””
https://order-order.com/2024/09/17/lammy-climate-change-bigger-threat-than-putin-and-hamas/
“”Labour are continuing to smash new records. Over 10,000 illegal migrants have now crossed the English Channel since they took the keys to Downing Street, bringing the total this year to 23,598. Over 100 more in Starmer’s first 75 days than Boris’ first year in government…””
https://order-order.com/2024/09/17/labours-record-10000-channel-migrants-since-coming-to-power/
“”Now Downing Street Gets Posh Food Delivery as Freebie Gate Grows””
https://order-order.com/2024/09/17/now-downing-street-gets-posh-food-delivery-as-freebie-gate-grows/
They’re already on borrowed time.
Think for a moment about exploding pagers.
What could a foreign government do? Install the capability of remotely disabling solar and wind and in a manner that would simultaneously shut off all power. Would our power engineers and technicians be able to quickly restore even enough to keep hospitals powered once the diesel backup generators run out of hydrocarbon fuel?
It isn’t just pagers
Thousands’ of Hezbollah walkie-talkies explode across Lebanon
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/09/18/israel-hamas-war-gaza-latest-news-hezbollah-pagers-lebanon/
Worth keeping a pen and paper to hand.
Just to show you what a moron MiliTwat is, he was bemoaning the closure of Grangemouth refinery due to the policies he supports and is trying to implement at speed. The irony is that Labour paymasters in the unions are now complaining about their policy of job losses.
The goal is to destroy the United States. thanks Obama
It seems that way, doesn’t it.
Is this what Obama meant when he said he wanted to “fundamentally change” the United States?
Obama is no master mind – he may be cognitively with it, but he’s every bit as much of a puppet as is Biden and, likely, many other of our political ‘leaders’. The questions remain, who are the real puppeteers and what can be done to restore limited government.
To paraphrase Carlin, “It’s a big club and [we] ain’t in it”.
” who are the real puppeteers and what can be done to restore limited government”
I say follow the money, start with BlackRock 4+Trillion AUM..I don’t see anything
changing till they fail. And they will fail.
‘The money’ is always a good place to start, but keep in mind that Black Rock et al are just symptoms of money creation ex nihilo. Nixon’s ‘temporary’ closing of the US Treasury’s gold window in 1971 marks the effective end of any constraints on Federal government spending and scope.
I agree, you don’t know what you don’t know, but the money
always leads to a point.
Follow the money.
It’s impossible to follow the money. Just when you think its all accounted for, they print new money and spend that. There is no added value, no one created any new wealth. Its a ponzi scheme.
Don’t forget this Obama quote from 2008, 16 years ago (from a Politico article):
It must be tempting to go for a fourth term for Obama, so that the rebuild can start after the total crash, but that’s so much misery for so many people it barely bears thinking about. Better to go for Donald Trump and hope that sanity can prevail within 4 years.
The Democrats state rigorously that Trump is the biggest threat to Democracy.
They are correct.
… wait for it…
The USA is not a democracy, it is a REPUBLIC. To be a true democracy would be a complete socialist take over.
It started with JFK when he redefined the country as a democracy. The purpose back then appears to be associating the party of Democrats as the true rulers or the country as opposed to the party of Republicans being the true protectors of the Republic.
fwiw – JFK would be a republican today. He was anti communist, anti-socialist. everyone in the democrat party is now full fledged socialist, pro communist, pro hamas.
“The Democrats state rigorously that Trump is the biggest threat to Democracy.”
What they really mean is Trump is a threat to radical Democrat rule, and they are correct.
And that’s a good thing,. Radical Democrat rule should be put under threat, and defeated, if our nation is to survive these delusional people and their delusional policies.
But but but without democrats, nobody would get free stuff.
It’s democrats that want to tax wealth, don’t forget.
There is no “free stuff.” Just confiscated stuff.
Well of course. Western Governments don’t bake the pie, they just stick their finger into it. Nothing different about that for ever.
But when they start telling you what type of pie to bake and then take half, its a different issue.
Notice that they say “a threat to our democracy”. The word “our” matters. The democracy they are talking about is like the democracy in North Korea.
Same people wore a cloth muzzle while driving their car alone during COVID.
CCS fails in two aspects, availability and affordability. It has NEVER been installed on a commercial gas turbine unit, so how can EPA say it is available? Any how does one store the CO2? There are many places that are nowhere near a sequesterable geology. And locals have been known to fight tooth and nail against CO2 storage as well as pipelines.
And affordability? CCS decreases the amount of power delivered to the grid while increasing the capital, operations and maintenance costs. So everyone’s power bills will increase substantially even if it can be built. And it will be the utilities faults because they send the bill. The government then points the dirty finger at them.
And what happens when the sequesterable geological locations become full? Or an earthquake causes a massive release?
It has been installed on a coal fired unit. I cannot find the economics of how that turned out but I read news stories that indicated that the price of electricity had to go up 40% to cover the cost of CCS.
Cloward-Piven. Overload the system until it collapses.
Cloward died 50 years ago.
Piven is still stinking up New York. If her policies truly succeed she will be the last one there.
These two also concocted the idea for the ‘Motor Voter’ act. (the impetus for automatically registering idiots and illegals to vote).
(They are both on my ‘pee on their grave’ list. I didn’t know Piven was still alive … I may e-mail her, describe the concept of traveling throughout retirement & writing a book about it, and ask her where her husband (Cloward) is currently located).
UK Labor take extra pressure off the grid ditching promise of EVs only by 2030-
(64) Audi E-Tron GT catches fire ON HOIST! MGUY EV News 18 September 2024 | MGUY Australia – YouTube
(Californy Tesla virtue signallers in a dilemma over RWDB Musk and suitably concerned about the great moral imperative of their times can switch to Audi)
RWDB = Retraction Watch Database 🤔
“will significantly reduce climate, air, water, and land pollution from the power sector”
So climate is not air, water, and land, but rather something independent of those?
Air, water and land are real, “climate” isn’t. Climate is an abstract.
We solved actual pollution problems decades ago. Outdoor air is generally cleaner than the air inside your house today. Talk about non-solutions to imaginary problems.
“the EPA’s rules will mandate existing coal plants to harness 90% of their emissions by 2032”
OK, but only if the EPA executives harness 90% of their farts and 90% of the CO2 coming out of their mouths.
Driving along, listening to NPR- I hear a story about how there are now 5 floods going on- on this planet. How shocking. And there are only 56 billion acres of dry land on this planet- yet 5 floods are happening at the same time. All due, of course, to man caused climate change! /s
Why are you listening to NPR?
It sometimes has interesting stuff when it’s not on politics.
It does, I was just being sarcastic, but i listen to it too, sometimes. mostly some of the weekend stuff.
The EPA is relying of grid experts such as Marc Jacobson – (who happens to have zero actual industry experience and whose work is peer reviewed by individuals with zero actual industry experience).
Why should we trust these grid operators who have actual real world industry expertise when we should be trusting the renewable energy experts who zero actual industry experience.
Signed
Joe – The woke intellectual
This past week there were two major accidents on east west interstates. One was in Wyoming that amounted to 7 hours of delay for East bound traffic on I-80. The second was on I-70 which blocked both lanes. The east bound delay when we passed it was backed up for a measured 3 miles when we saw it, I am sure it was eventually a combination of larger delays as they had rolling stoppages at places where they could at least use the rest room. That said it became absolutely, unequivocally apparent that anyone who claims we can support interstate trucking with electricity is absolutely a babbling loon. The sudden surge of electric power it would take to support a 7 hour stoppage in the winter would be beyond calculation. There isn’t even enough to support passenger vehicles under those circumstances. Force moves to electrification are malpractice and criminal negligence. Moves to prevent coal and gas fired power sources are, in my opinion antisocial, antiscientific, radical and pose a threat to life and property. Even if we had full power supplied by nuclear the delivery infrastructure required for the proposed restrictions on usage, as in electric vehicles, make no sense and the catastrophic unintended possibilities are endless.
Another very informative read. A perfect example of unelected bureaucrats making law with no accountability. This is really bad. We would be better served with no EPA. They have outlived their usefulness.
The EPA was formed in 1970. 55 years later should have been enough time to clean everything up that was already polluted. Of course, when the EPA was formed, they were empowered to create new regulations which were instituted to prevent future pollution as well.
So apparently, their list of pollutants has grown and continues to grow. Otherwise , there would be less pollution.
Sounds like mission creep to me as well as somebody not doing their job.
CO2 has blocked all the infra-red (IR) radiation going back into space that it is going to block. CO2 does not block all IR, only specific frequencies. These asinine rules are a violation of the preamble to the Constitution to “promote the general welfare” which means promoting trade, industry, commerce, and the creation of jobs. Blackouts caused by coal and natural gas fired generating plants being shut down does not support the general welfare.
By the way, at 400PPM no further blocking of IR by7 CO2 occurs. We are already at 412ppm.
Harold the Organic Chemist Says:
At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is now 426 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air contains only 0.837 grams of CO2 and has a mass of 1.29 kgs at STP.
For sunny day with a temp. of 70 deg. F and a RH of 70%, the concentration of H2O is
14,780 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has 14.3 grams of H2O and a mass of 1.20 kgs.
In this warm air there is 0.780 grams of CO2.
To the first approximation the amount of greenhouse effect (GHE) due to H20 is given by:
Percent GHE for H2O = moles H2O/moles H2O+moles CO2 = 0.79+0.02 = 97.5%
This calculation assumes a H2O molecules and a CO2 molecules absorb about the same amount of incoming IR radiation in sunlight and outgoing IR radiation from the earth’s surface. Actually H20 absorbs much more IR radiation than CO2.
Based on the above data and calculations, I have concluded that the claim by the IPCC since 1988 that CO2 causes global warming is a lie.
BTW: were you able to understand the chemistry? I would like to send tis short essay to the “letters to editor” of major news paper.
Please go to: http://www.John-Daly.com. This is the late John-Daly’s website:
“Still Waiting for Greenhouse”
From top of the home page, scroll down to end and click on “Station Temperature Data”.
On the World Map, click on NA, then click on Pacific, and finally scroll down and click on
“Death Valley”
The graphic shows plots of the annual average seasonal temperatures and a plot of the average annual temperature. The temperature plots are fairly flat. In 1923, the concentration
of CO2 was 300 ppmv and by 2001 it had increased to 367 ppmv. The increase of the CO2
in the air did not result in an increase in temperature.
On the basis of the empirical temperature data, it can be concluded that CO2 does not cause warming of the atmosphere of the earth.
Go check out the famous Alice Springs, AU graph. The average annual temperature has been fairly constant since 1979.
There is a LOT of money to be made in failure of the grid.
The Left is a cult of death.