According to a recent study commissioned by the state government in North Dakota, President Joe Biden’s extreme climate regulations, which target fossil fuel-fired power plants, will cause widespread network instability and cause widespread blackouts that will affect millions of Americans.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s just finalized restrictions, according to the study conducted in May, are not technically transferable and will undoubtedly cause fuel electricity generation models to retire. Intermittent and weather- centered alternative energy sources, like as wind and solar, may replace for retired generators, leading to unsatisfactory conditions, the study found.
The investigation mainly echoes concerns that have been voiced by the U. S. network guardian, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, local network operators, and energy power companies. Following the initial public hearings on the EPA regulations last year, four regional grid operators that control the infrastructure supplying power for 154 million Americans warned that grid reliability would “dwindle worryingly” under the regulations. The Edison Electric Institute, the lead industry group representing U. S. electric companies, in late May joined a lawsuit that challenged the EPA’s finalized regulations.
” Biden’s Green Agenda is rapidly destabilizing our electrical grid and is shutting down baseload power. Electricity costs are up 30 % under Biden already”, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum ( R. ) told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. ” Re-election will continue to soaring as real power demand increases dramatically for chip manufacturing and new foundational industries like AI,” he predicted.
Burgum, a member of the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which commissioned the study, added that Biden’s regulatory regime will reduce power supplies, leading to “higher prices AND less reliability”.
The EPA completed the first phase of a multi-pronged effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by the country’s power sector in April. The regulations call for the majority of coal plants in the country to reduce their carbon footprint by 90 % by 2032, which would mean that the majority of these plants nationwide will shut down over the next 20 years. Additionally, they call for significant emissions reductions for brand-new natural gas-fired power plants that run more than 20 % of the time.
The finalized regulations are likely to have a significant impact on Midwestern states like North Dakota, where coal-fired power plants account for more than half of the electricity produced and where the four largest power plants are all coal-fired. Additionally, North Dakota is the state with the sixth-largest coal-producing capacity in the nation.
The rules ‘ economic effects, according to Always On Energy Research, include raising the cost of compliance for coal plant operators, lowering competition with alternative power sources, lowering the rate of coal retirements, raising electricity prices, and creating supply chain issues for industries dependent on coal.
” The Finalized Rule will increase costs, which, compounded with inflation, will negatively impact the affordability of electric and gas services, resulting in a disproportionate effect on low- income citizens”, the study stated. Given the high rural population of North Dakota, pricing low-income people out of a reliable energy source has devastating [sic]sic]sic effects on North Dakotans ‘ lives.
In addition, under EPA’s plans, coal plants—considered dispatchable power, or power that can quickly be turned on in times of high electricity demand—will largely be replaced by new solar and wind power generators, which are highly dependent on proper wind conditions.
Solar panels, for example, produce just 25 percent and wind turbines produce 34 percent of their listed capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration. Coal and natural gas plants, meanwhile, respectively produce 49 percent and 54 percent of their listed capacity.
Taking that disparity into account, Always On Energy Research predicted that the Midwest’s grid would experience nearly 9 million megawatt hours of unreliable power, leading to blackouts that would cost tens of billions of dollars.
According to Paige Lambermont, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute,” the EPA power plant rule is exactly the wrong thing to be doing right now” for grid reliability. There will be incredibly poor aftereffects if the facilities that are keeping the grid running are purposefully closing and, essentially, interfering with the grid in other ways by encouraging the penetration of things like wind and solar that are making the grid less reliable.
According to additional Energy Information Administration data, coal plants produced another 16 % of the total electricity produced in 2023, while natural gas plants produced roughly 43 percent of that figure. By comparison, wind power generated 10 percent of total electricity in the United States, and solar produced less than 6 percent.
In the upcoming months, the EPA is expected to finalize a second set of regulations aimed at reducing existing natural gas power plants.
In an effort to combat global warming and reduce pollution, Democrats and climate advocates have long targeted the power sector. Electric power generation in the United States accounts for 25 % of total national emissions, only trailing only the transportation industry, which generates about 28 % of the total emissions.
Angela Hackel, a spokeswoman for the EPA, told the Free Beacon that “over decades, EPA regulations like the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and Good Neighbor Rule have significantly reduced pollution from electricity generation while supporting reliability.”
” This rule will do the same”, Hackel said. She added that the North Dakota study is being looked at by the EPA.
