Republicans feign concern for power grid reliability in latest pitch to keep extracting fossil fuels

This week, House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Michael Regan about their fears that transitioning to renewables will somehow make an already over-stressed U.S. power grid entirely unreliable. The lawmakers, who are more or less looking for an excuse to call on the Biden administration to ramp up fossil fuel production, freaked out over the potential of closing down coal-fired power plants. In their letter, they offer the example of the agency “deciding whether to revoke permits for upwards of 50 gigawatts of coal-fire generation to meet requirements of its coal combustion residual rule.” The rule is meant to address dangerous coal ash disposal methods that frequently harm marginalized communities, among other concerns.

Regan addressing a major environmental justice issue falls in line with his commitment to equitability, yet the GOP fears that power grid operators like Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) will further fail customers because less coal-fired power will be available. They cite MISO’s own claims that eliminating more coal-fired generation pushes the operator “into dangerous territory.” House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans claim that wind and solar power are simply too unreliable to replace good old-fashioned coal—a talking point that maybe had relevancy during the nascent years of renewable development. With better energy storage technology, that’s simply no longer the case.