The former Obama administration official who inspired Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to create “red” and “blue” teams to debate the science of climate change is now putting his support behind President Trump’s bid to save ailing coal and nuclear power plants.
Steve Koonin, Obama’s former science chief at the Energy Department, signed onto a letter with more than 70 other former politicians, military and government officials to urge Energy Secretary Rick Perry to continue his push for policies to save the power plants based on national security.
“We write to commend you for recognizing the important role our civil nuclear energy sector plays in bolstering America’s national security,” the letter sent to Perry Tuesday reads. “We urge you to continue to take concrete steps to ensure the national security attributes of U.S. nuclear power plants are properly recognized by policymakers and are valued in U.S. electricity markets.”
Koonin proposed last year in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that climate science would benefit from a technique pioneered by the military to test theories, called red-blue teams. The idea would be to challenge assertions by one team versus the other and come up with solutions.
Perry was the first member of the Trump administration to propose using Koonin’s idea. “It’s a great opportunity for this country to have a conversation about the climate and get the politics out of it, and bring the scientists together,” Perry said while answering questions last year at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the fiscal 2018 budget.
Months later, Pruitt took up the Koonin idea and began pulling it together. But the White House did not want to go along with Pruitt’s idea of having a televised climate change debate, and it was shelved.
Koonin has not discussed the idea publicly after the Wall Street Journal op-ed. This week’s letter is the first time since then that he has publicly supported a specific policy position.
Koonin is joined by 74 others, including Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and former Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi. Dale Klein, former Republican chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, also signed the letter.
Former military officials and industry CEOs also joined. Those included: Daniel F. Akerson, former chairman and CEO of General Motors, Norman Augustine, the former undersecretary of the Army and former CEO of Lockheed Martin, Adm. Frank L. “Skip” Bowman, former director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion, and Linton Brooks, former administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The officials say that independent agencies in Washington such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the grid operators it oversees are examining the issue of grid resilience, but “their important considerations must be integrated with the broader national security imperatives and perspectives, and that integration can only occur at your level.”
“These deliberations must be conducted with care and will, of necessity, take time to complete,” the letter continues. “In the interim, we urge you to ensure that no more nuclear power plants are closed prematurely due to insufficient valuation of nuclear energy’s national security, resilience, and other benefits in our nation’s electricity markets.”
President Trump ordered Perry this month to take steps to save coal and nuclear power plants from closing prematurely. A large coalition of oil and natural gas trade groups, utilities and renewable energy trade associations are pushing back against Trump’s plan, saying the markets should be allowed to function by not picking winners and losers.
The Trump plan likely would incorporate some form of market-based incentive to essentially pay power plants for the national security benefits they provide in being able to bounce back from a cyberattack or major weather disaster.
Perry proposed a regulation last year that sought to establish market-based incentives in the FERC-controlled markets, which the commission rejected last fall.
