Mark C. Peterson, Bismarck

The United States is skating down a slippery slope of an electricity reliability crisis and the Environmental Protection Agency is greasing the skids. As the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources heard grave warnings that the U.S. is headed for a “catastrophic” electricity reliability situation, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drafted proposed plans to shut down or further limit baseload generation such as electricity from coal.

Given the current nationwide coal retirement assumptions, upwards of 55% of coal capacity will be lost nationwide. These losses contribute to a massive megawatt shortfall and force the grid to rely on weather-dependent resources.

The agency responsible for the regulation of interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – has been sounding the alarm for extreme electricity demand and waning reliability but it is falling on deaf ears as demonstrated by the EPA’s release of its newly proposed power plant rules.

While U.S. Senators heard about “unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system,” from Biden-appointed FERC Chairman Willie Phillips, the EPA levied another shot across the bow at the very thing that provides reliable electricity – coal. The proposed limits on carbon emissions from power plants are set on a sliding scale of capacity factors, CO2 emission rates, and retirement dates which mandate that the existing coal fleet capture 90% of carbon emissions, switch fuel source, or retire.

The nation’s electric grid and its citizens’ quality of life are in grave danger at the hands of the current administration’s misguided ideology.