As the use of natural gas for electricity production increases, consumers are in for a shock. Electricity prices could skyrocket if an explosion in a major interstate natural gas pipeline leads to a cascading blackout. This inflammatory and unprovoked warning surfaces in a study done for the Nuclear Energy Institute on the risk of growing dependence on natural gas due to continued nuclear plant retirements.
What’s remarkable about the salvo fired against natural gas is that it comes from an energy sector with its own history of getting targeted for being unsafe: the nuclear industry. Since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, many reasonable people have entertained reasonable doubts about nuclear power. By contrast, natural gas has a reputation for efficiency, economy, public health, and safety.
The study, by ICF International, focuses mainly on the mid-Atlantic electric grid known as the PJM Interconnection, which extends across 13 states from the Atlantic coast to the Midwest. It maintains that a “significant gas infrastructure event” could cause blackouts in the region for multiple days if the existing nuclear power is retired. The study said this sort of gas system disruption, the result of an explosion or cyberattack, could cut off 27,000 megawatts of gas-fired power in a region that has come to depend more heavily on natural gas because gas is cheaper and has greater public acceptance than either nuclear power or coal.
The NEI-sponsored study, while acknowledging that the interstate gas pipeline system is “robust and highly interconnected,” pointed to an April 2016 rupture on Texas Eastern Transmission LP’s Penn-Jersey system that affected multiple pipelines and necessitated monthslong repair work, along with a June 2013 instance of leaking failed wells that affected flows on ANR Pipeline Co.’s Southeast Mainline. Neither incident led to blackouts, but the study noted that the Texas Eastern incident disrupted flows of resources that were not being used especially heavily at the time.
Natural gas pipelines are robust and resilient. The Department of Transportation says that pipelines are the most efficient and reliable way to transport natural gas.
There has been a dramatic increase in domestic gas production. Since 2010, an abundance of shale gas produced with the use of new revolutionary technologies (a combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling) has helped buoy the nation’s economy, reduce consumer costs for gas and electricity, while bringing on a manufacturing resurgence, creating thousands of jobs, and enabling utilities to switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation. This has improved air quality and led to a dramatic decline in greenhouse-gas emissions.
On the other hand, the coal and nuclear industries are lobbying the Trump administration to save financially distressed coal and nuclear plants in order to maintain electricity reliability, but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says that reliability is not at risk. Thanks to the shale revolution, America’s electricity needs are now being met primarily with natural gas.
The idea that natural gas could become the No. 1 source of electricity production seemed improbable at one time. But it no longer is. Natural gas eclipsed nuclear power as an energy source for electricity generation in 2006 and coal in 2016 to become the nation’s largest source of electricity. Unlike nuclear power, natural gas has played a significant role in the renaissance of lower energy prices.
There is no turning back the clock. Despite the nuclear industry’s guile, there is a good chance that natural gas, along with solar and wind energy, will outperform nuclear power and eventually replace it in the production of America’s electricity.
Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.
