But Wright casts cheap, clean power as mere empty calories that steal market share from coal, gas, and nuclear power. Energy supplied only when “the weather is mild, when the sun shines or the wind blows, doesn’t add anything to the capacity of our electricity grid,” he said. “It just means we send subsidy checks to those generators, and we tell the other generators, ‘Turn down.’”
Here, Wright mischaracterizes how utilities and grid operators dispatch power plants. Wind and solar often “turn down” when they’re generating more power than the grid needs. But fossil-fueled power plants stop generating when their power is too expensive to compete with what wind and solar generators are offering — market forces in action.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that utilities and grid operators are well aware that wind and solar are weather-dependent and don’t produce all the time. These experts constantly assess the availability of all resources — not just renewables — and plan accordingly.
Wright also neglected to say that fossil fuels themselves can fail during winter storms — and often in less predictable and more harmful ways than when the sun sets or the wind dies down.
During Winter Storm Fern, it was a different story: Generator failures did not force utilities and grid operators to shut off power. One likely reason is that, in the years since Uri, regulators have imposed winterization requirements on owners of gas power plants in Texas and other parts of the country, though just how effective those interventions were is not yet clear.
Another probable factor contributing to the grid’s resilience this time around was having a better overall mix of resources. Energy experts agree that portfolios of mutually reinforcing resources are the key to grid reliability. In the Lone Star State, solar and battery storage have surged in recent years. Texas’ grid weathered this January’s cold snap, experts say, because it had an array of fuel sources on hand.
But of course, Wright didn’t acknowledge any of that. He simply railed against renewables, painting them as leeches on the power system.
Fossil-fueled power plants remain vital to the U.S. grid, whether they’re designed to run around the clock or only during emergencies, as is the case for New England’s oil-burning generators — one of the grid’s costliest resources, precisely because they run so infrequently. But renewables are vital, too. In New England, the gigawatts of offshore wind being built from Connecticut to Maine that have been under attack since the first day of the second Trump administration are also one of the most valuable winter resources for the region.
The DOE’s job is not to take a snapshot of the worst 15 minutes of the year and use it to justify policies that freeze in place that exact mix of grid resources. Instead, it’s to assess and manage the grid’s evolving technical, economic, environmental, and climatic realities, and to foster newer, better resources to replace those that aren’t keeping up.
The more Wright pretends otherwise, and uses half-truths to force fossil fuels onto a system that would be better served by cheaper and cleaner alternatives, the worse off we’ll all be.
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Great Job Jeff St. John & the Team @ Canary Media for sharing this story.
