Exclusives

EXCLUSIVE: Biden EPA’s Power Plant Scheme Would Hamstring US Energy, New Report Finds

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Power the Future (PTF), an energy advocacy organization, published a new report Thursday highlighting the severe negative impacts that the Biden administration’s proposal to reshape America’s power grid would have on energy reliability.

The PTF report, shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation, analyzes a May proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that would force power plants to adopt expensive and generally unproven technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. The proposal, which the EPA asserts will reduce emissions without necessarily forcing the replacement coal- and gas-fired plants with green energy generation, is a de facto end-run to achieve nearly identical policy outcomes to those envisioned by the Obama administration’s “Clean Power Plan,” which the Supreme Court shot down in West Virginia v. EPA, according to the PTF report.

“The EPA’s Clean Power Plan 2.0 is one of the most costly, infeasible and dangerous policies handed down by the Biden administration – and that is not a low bar,” Daniel Turner, PTF’s executive director, told the DCNF. “It would cede U.S. energy security to communist China, making America more reliant on imported critical minerals and rare earth elements to power our electric grid. At the same time, Americans would face more blackouts and brownouts, and higher electricity bills, as reliable coal and natural gas plants are forced to shut down. Handing hostile foreign countries a payday at the expense of U.S. national security to appease the radical eco-left is, unfortunately, par for the course for President Biden.”

Power The Future – EPA’… by Nick Pope

The proposal effectively stipulates that existing coal-fired power plants must cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040, and that new and existing natural gas power plants also make significant cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions depending on their size and situational use, according to its text.

The EPA proposes that power plants can achieve these reductions by installing expensive carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to their facilities, or by using blended hydrogen to reduce emissions in the case of natural gas-fired plants. “EPA’s proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said when his agency unveiled the proposal in May.

Critics of the proposal, which include other industry advocacy groups beyond PTF and 21 state attorneys general, assert that the regulation would effectively force plants to close because the means that EPA would mandate to achieve the necessary reductions are prohibitively expensive and have not sufficiently demonstrated their efficacy.

“Not only is EPA’s indifference to the consequences of its actions irresponsible and reckless, but it’s also potentially illegal,” the PTF report states, in reference to the administration’s decision to roll out the proposal as grid watchdogs have warned of elevated blackout risks and recent close calls with Texas’ grid operator’s ability to adequately meet elevated demand.

A grid dependent on intermittent green energy generation “sounds nice in theory, but the enormous cost, complex logistics, permitting challenges and rapid technological progress required” to build it out to replace the reliable fossil fuel-based infrastructure in place “apparently hasn’t crossed the minds of EPA officials,” the report says.

Furthermore, a future slew of plant retirements would jeopardize the grid’s reliability and affordability, as well as likely increase America’s reliance on intermittent green generation sources like solar and wind, the supply chains for which China dominates on the global level, PTF argues in its report.

“Greater, and more dangerous energy dependence on China; an unreliable electric grid prone to blackouts and brownouts; blatant violation of the law passed by Congress and established by the Supreme Court: these will be the grim results if EPA’s CPP 2.0 takes effect,” PTF’s report concludes.

Neither the White House nor the EPA responded immediately to requests for comment.