Disaster is looming for the electric grid

The roadblocks to sourcing the dramatically higher volumes of critical minerals like copper required have been apparent for at least half a decade now. More recently, concerns have arisen about the worsening crisis in supply chains for high voltage transformers. Despite these and many other warning signs, though, the lazy legacy media that dominates public discourse has remained largely silent on the matter, preferring instead to continue parroting the rosy, Unicorn-filled narratives pushed by climate alarm groups and the leftwing billionaires who fund them. 

But last week, the ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ folks at the Washington Post belatedly leapt into the fray with a major story recognizing the reality that “America is running out of power.” The story correctly identifies the rise of power-gobbling data centers as major drivers of explosive demand growth, along with grid-draining electric vehicle charging and green tech manufacturing facilities. The drive for decarbonisation also means that many other previously fossil fuelled activities, such as heating, are more and more being done with electricity. The challenge grid managers face is how to expand generation capacity in not only the volume but also the speed required to meet the public need.

The Post quotes one public official, Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, expressing surprise at the sudden exponential rise in power demand. “When you look at the numbers, it is staggering. It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation.”

But there’s no need to wonder how we ended up in this situation, because the reason is obvious. America is in this situation because of short-sighted and frankly stupid public policies invoked by politicians who make decisions based on pressures from political campaigns and little else. That explains how congressional Democrats, on a straight party line vote in both the Senate and House, passed the Orwellian “Inflation Reduction Act” into law, kicking off so many of the power-hogging projects and the rapid EV expansion that now threaten to overwhelm the grid. 

The crisis we face is entirely public policy driven. Those policy decisions have been designed to increasingly deny the ability of power providers to build reliable, 24/7 baseload and dispatchable generation fired by coal, natural gas, or nuclear, while simultaneously subsidizing the expansion of unreliable, weather-dependent wind and solar. This is a witches’ brew of policies that ensures a steady diminution of grid reliability even as demand is exploding and the grid is becoming hugely more important. On Page 27 of its 2023 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, the National Energy Reliability Corporation (NERC) projects that well over half of planned generation expansions in the coming decade will consist of solar additions, with more from wind, presaging a grid overwhelmed with weather-reliant, intermittent generation.

It is key to recognize that our current situation on the precipice of disaster has been entirely caused by authoritarian public policy decisions designed to try to force markets to behave in ways they would never behave of their own volition. Throughout modern history, a major energy crisis has always been required as the germination point to excite real change in energy policy direction.

But a radical shift in policy direction will be required to enable the markets to readjust, a process that will take years to implement. Elections will only produce marginal change unless excited by a major crisis. Even if, say, Donald Trump wins this coming November, his administration will likely only generate changes on the margins. Why? Because most of the refugees from the NRDC and Sierra Club hired by Biden and Barack Obama will remain embedded in the bureaucracies at the EPA and other key regulatory agencies. They will fight every proposed policy shift with every tactic and tool at their disposal.

Appearing before the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee last summer, Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Mark Christie said “the United States is heading for a reliability crisis. I do not use the term ‘crisis’ for melodrama, but because it is an accurate description of what we are facing.”

Change at the top is important, but it probably can’t act fast enough to avert the looming crisis on the grid. Only having to live through the crisis itself will make the population angry enough to force the radical change that is really required, and that is a frightening prospect indeed.

So, kudos to the Washington Post for finally at least recognizing this problem exists. It will be interesting to see how long it takes it and other legacy media outlets to start talking about the frightening realities it presents to the public and policymakers. Hopefully, democracy won’t die in the darkness in the meantime.

David Blackmon had a 40 year career in the US energy industry, the last 23 years of which were spent in the public policy arena, managing regulatory and legislative issues for various companies. He continues to write and podcast on energy matters