Energy Department advisers are gearing up to vet the effects of the Obama administration’s strict new power plant rules later this month, as worries about power outages grow.
The Energy Department quietly announced the Sept. 29 meeting of top advisers, called the Electricity Advisory Committee. Its task is to advise the agency on challenges facing the nation’s electric grid. This time, the challenge for the committee is the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate agenda, the Clean Power Plan.
The “Clean Power Plan is an unprecedented interference with the reliability of the U.S. electrical system — from power input to regulatory governance,” said Scott Segal, president of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a broad industry coalition fighting the rule. “In order to avoid reliability problems, there would have to be an unprecedented level of interagency coordination and expert outreach” that hasn’t been seen yet.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s plan places states on the hook to lower their greenhouse gas emissions a third by 2030. The emissions include carbon dioxide, which many scientists say is the cause of manmade global warming through the burning of coal and other fossil fuels.
Critics, including Republicans and some Democrats, say the plan will raise electricity rates and threaten the reliability of the grid, with little benefit in stopping global warming. While the EPA differs on these points, it has conceded a bit on reliability.
The agency finalized the Clean Power Plan on Aug. 3 with an added provision that seeks to address the possibility of power outages by including what grid operators call a “safety valve.” The safety mechanism would allow a power plant destined for the scrap heap under the rules to continue operating if state regulators, in coordination with the Department of Energy, deem it necessary to keep the lights on.
But even with the change, “many of the facts on the ground have not changed regarding reliability since the rule was first proposed,” Segal said. Regardless of the EPA’s new reliability safeguards, “there has been insufficient coordination” among the agency, the Energy Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “to allay reliability concerns.”
“In fact, changes reflected in the final rule will require even greater reliance on [renewable] energy sources that are uniquely taxing to the grid,” Segal added. “The consensus of reliability experts in the field have flagged significant difficulties with the rule.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the nation’s grid regulator, had urged the EPA to include the safety valve measure in the final rule.The final EPA rule also calls for increased coordination among the Energy Department, FERC and EPA. But state environmental officials say that coordination has yet to be seen.
The Energy Department’s advisory committee could be a sign that the agencies are coming together.
The Sept. 29 meeting will begin with an update on the Energy Department’s grid modernization efforts and other programs under the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.
After that, the meeting will shift to compliance hurdles posed by the EPA’s rule and assessing issues that could arise under the Clean Power Plan, according to an official agency notice.
The meeting also will include panels on Clean Power Plan compliance options, while looking at new data that shows that energy storage could help make the transition to more solar and wind under the rules possible. But it also will look at less expensive compliance options such as energy efficiency.
The EPA removed efficiency from the four resources it used to calculate the states’ emission targets under the proposal. Nevertheless, the agency has said efficiency can be used by states to comply with the rule. It was just taken out of the mix in setting the goals.
Other Energy Department advisory groups will be convening around the same time and are expected to focus on aspects of the president’s climate agenda, although the Energy Department was not as forthcoming on the details of those meetings.
