(WASHINGTON, DC) Months of breathless anticipation culminated late Wednesday with the release of the Energy Department's grid study that concluded the surge in supplies of cheap natural gas had weighed on power prices and was the key factor in the closure of many coal-fired power plants, Pro's Darius Dixon reports . The report, requested by Secretary Rick Perry, doesn't call for Congress to change any laws but does seek "reforms" - from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the EPA and FERC - to power markets that would help bolster the electricity network's resilience and provide support for some plants.
The agency linked four factors - cheap gas, low electricity demand growth over the past decade, government regulations and the influx of renewable energy into the grid - to the struggles of coal and nuclear power, but didn't try to assign a percentage of blame to each of them.
Still, Perry did cast some side-eye at renewables incentives, saying in a letteraccompanying the report "[i]t is apparent that in today's competitive markets certain regulations and subsidies are having a large impact on the functioning of markets, and thereby challenging our power generation mix. It is important for policy makers to consider their intended and unintended effects."
But the report takes a softer tone than Perry's April memo that ordered up the study, which said Obama era regulations had "destroyed jobs and economic growth" and threatened the grid, and suggested that federal support for renewable power "create[s] acute and chronic problems." That document, energy guru Peter Fox-Penner told Darius, was "looking through a preconceived, political lens broadly at baseload and blaming renewables policy, which is looking at the wrong culprit. The right direction for a solution is market design."
Part of the reason for DOE's call for FERC, EPA and other bodies to help alter electricity market and aid power plants is because the agency has limited power to direct energy policy. "DOE has no authority," former FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, a Democrat, said ahead of the report's release. "It's FERC that has all the authority .. .and DOE does not control FERC. I would say that when I was there, and I'd say it now."
Other voices weigh in: Graham Richard, CEO of Advanced Energy Economy, said grid operators weren't having the troubles adjusting to a wide array of resources as suggested: "This report seriously overstates the challenges associated with new energy resources," he said. Consumer Energy Alliance President David Holt called it an important step in discussing the future of the energy grid: "While utilities, electric cooperatives, and grid operators have been able to absorb the changes brought about by increases in renewable energy and the abundance of low-cost natural gas, it is clear that they will have significant challenges as the pace of change accelerates," he said in a statement. Others were not so positive. "Coal and nuclear can no longer compete on their own, and they are now pushing Trump to save them. This study is a shoddy attempt to do just that," the Sierra Club's Mary Anne Hitt said.
