While the Biden administration maintains that new rules for fossil fuel-fired power plants won’t pose problems for grid reliability, grid experts say the exact opposite will ultimately happen. It warns that this is a possibility.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced A final rule on fossil fuel-fired power plants was released Thursday, marking one of President Joe Biden’s most aggressive moves to combat climate change. Although the EPA has said the rule will not reduce the reliability of the electricity powering the economy, grid experts say the rule will reduce the expected increase in demand in the coming years. They are concerned that this will limit the amount of affordable and reliable electricity available to support their needs.
Under new regulations, existing coal-fired power plants in the U.S. will be able to generate 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032 by using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology if they want to continue operating beyond 2039. and certain new natural gas power plants need to be regulated as well. The agency says it will reduce emissions by 90% by 2032. CCS requirements pose the most serious risk to power grid reliability, according to experts who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation. That’s because, while demand is expected to grow, the technology is not yet ready to play a significant role in the power grid. . (Related: Officials tell Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency that its aggressive green power plant plan has serious flaws, documents show)
“Government agencies are putting tough emissions limits on new natural gas-fired power plants that will be needed to ensure reliability if coal-fired power plants are forced to shut down early. “Coal-heavy regions, such as those covered by independent operators, will be vulnerable to reliability issues in the near future,” said Isaac Orr, a policy researcher at the American Experiment Center who specializes in system analysis, at the DCNF. told. . “Authorities are relying on existing natural gas plants (which are not regulated under this set of regulations) and carbon capture and sequestration to keep the lights on even when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Only a handful of U.S. coal facilities have expressed interest in CCS, making it very difficult to meet the compliance deadline (2032) at the scale suggested by the EPA. Therefore, this is a problem.”
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Officials within the Biden administration have expressed similar concerns about CCS readiness, with some describing it as a “prohibitively expensive” and inefficient technology.[exacerbate] According to an internal affairs paper released by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in February, if “grid reliability predictions” are widely deployed before they are fully developed,
Another concern highlighted by critics is that government agencies are effectively reconfiguring the U.S. power grid as utilities anticipate a significant increase in power demand from things like electric vehicles (EVs). is. data center and computer chips factory. Grid planners predict that from 2023 to 2028 national electricity demand will jump nearly 5%. In 2022 he is predicted to increase by 2.6%. according to To the December 2023 report by grid strategya consulting firm focused on power grids.
“We are very concerned that this rule will cut off reliable power supplies as demand soars. This rule essentially forces owners of power plants that are not ready for large-scale deployments to It forces us to either deploy CCS or shut it down,” Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy research at the Cato Institute, told DCNF. “Many power plant owners will simply choose to shut down rather than risk pioneering expensive and unproven CCS approaches.”
“EPA is misleading the American public about how much this rule will cost them,” Fisher continued. “Bundling existing coal-fired power plants and new natural gas power plants with CCS is a very expensive proposition, but EPA maintains that the rule will not increase retail electricity rates. EPA Modeling is simply wrong and does not reflect reality.”
Meredith Angwin, an energy analyst and prolific author on the electric grid, believes CCS requirements will have a greater impact in areas served by regional transmission organizations (RTOs). Angwin told DCNF that RTOs are structured to be less prepared to deal with the costs of new infrastructure and equipment compared to independent system operators (ISOs).
“In my opinion, the rule combines reasonable and completely unreasonable requirements. But carbon capture and storage is expensive at best and ineffective at worst,” Anne said. Gwin told DCNF. “On the other hand, carbon capture and storage will create reliability issues, especially in RTO regions…In RTO regions, gas and coal power plants with CCS are simply not competitive. In the RTO space, CCS obligations undermine credibility.”
Some critics have characterized the EPA’s latest plan as a de facto endgame for the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Obama EPA’s Clean Power Plan was illegal and that the EPA had overstepped its authority.
“The final rule differs in some ways from EPA’s May 2023 proposed rule. However, the overall picture remains the same. The rule establishes a 90% requirement for carbon capture and storage, which “It would eliminate coal and gas generation from the nation’s electricity mix,” said Marlo Lewis Jr., a senior fellow at the Institute for Competitive Enterprise. Said Follow EPA regulations. “This is the Enhanced Clean Power Plan. This rule contradicts the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA.”
West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito also compared the rules announced Thursday to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. statement Break new regulations. In the same statement, Capito pledged to spearhead the push to overturn the new regulations.
The EPA disputed that CCS is an unproven technology, arguing that it “has been proven for decades.”
“The power sector, which is responsible for a quarter of the US’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, will receive unprecedented financial support to reduce pollution and upgrade the electric grid to support more electricity. “We have more tools than ever before, including efficient permitting and long-term regulatory certainty for factories, electric vehicles, and other growing sources of electricity demand,” an agency spokesperson said. told. “Safe transportation and storage of CO”2 “This has been proven over decades,” the spokesperson continued, adding, “EPA believes these rules are based on a solid legal basis.”
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