The Obama administration’s climate rules for new power plants will cause coal plants to close more swiftly than without the regulations, the nation’s grid reliability watchdog said Thursday.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, issued its latest analysis on the administration’s Clean Power Plan, examining the plan’s effects on the power grid and need for regulators to keep the lights on.
The watchdog was sanctioned by Congress in 2005 to be the nation’s technical adviser on electric reliability and author of enforceable standards for the industry.
“NERC’s assessment shows that significant changes to the resource mix are occurring regardless of the [Clean Power Plan], but that the CPP accelerates some of these changes, underscoring a potential reliability challenge,” said Thomas Coleman, director of NERC Reliability Assessment. Coleman is urging states to begin planning new transmission lines that will be needed to connect more renewables to the grid to replace the lost coal.
The assessment finds that energy from wind and solar rises by between 10 and 20 gigawatts over the next 15 years, while the power from coal plants drops by as much as 27 gigawatts as a result of the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate plan, the report concludes. As a frame of reference, one gigawatt of electricity can power between 700,000 and 750,000 homes.
Without the Clean Power Plan, consumption of coal use would increase by up to 300 terawatt hours per year, which is equivalent to 300,000 gigawatt hours. Natural gas generation would drop by up to 550 TWh without the plan, as coal prices would flatten and natural gas prices rise, according to the group.
Under the final rule, however, coal-fired power generation is expected to drop by as much as 375 TWh, while natural gas output will increase by up to 87 TWh as compared to current projections.
The climate plan has stoked the ire of lawmakers from coal country, who call it the “war on coal.” Thirty states, led by the coal state of West Virginia, are engaged in a major legal battle to kill the Clean Power Plan, citing the harm it is projected to have on job losses. They argue that the plan is unconstitutional as well as illegal under the Clean Air Act.
