The Patriot Post® · Renewables vs. Reliables — Summer Energy Demands
Much of the United States west of the Great Lakes can expect rolling electrical blackouts this summer, according to a recent report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). The independent regulatory authority monitors electrical grids in the United States, Canada, and the Baja region of Mexico.
Heat and drought will obviously play a part, but the most significant reasons for these predicted power disruptions are manmade. The lack of power plants to meet demand, coupled with ongoing supply chain disruptions in the power industry, will conspire to interrupt service for millions of customers. And since energy blackouts don’t discriminate, it’ll also lead to thousands of deaths among the elderly and infirm.
John Moura, director of reliability assessment at NERC, told reporters that the lack of reliable power plants is due to the “pace of our grid transformation” being “out of sync.” We think he’s being kind. It’s more likely that our grid transformation is a complete fantasy pushed by the Left’s radical green agenda.
That agenda is supposedly about weaning us off fossil fuels while converting to renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar. Of course, making renewables the dominant source of energy in a country this size isn’t possible with our current technology — and it may never be. The numbers simply don’t add up. For example, it would take a solar farm twice the size of California to meet the nation’s current electricity needs. And where would all those solar cells with their environmentally unfriendly components come from? China.
But leftists aren’t waiting for technology or common sense to catch up with their dream. They’ve already begun shutting down our fossil fuel-fired power plants with complete disregard as to how to replace the lost electrical output. On his first day in office, President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and numerous exploration and drilling leases for oil and gas companies. At the federal and state level, Democrats have been setting arbitrary target dates for carbon neutrality, conversion to electric vehicles, and conversion to renewable energy sources. They figure that by phasing out the dreaded dinosaur juice, they’re demonstrating their commitment to the environment and somehow proving that the green agenda is a success. All this without actually going green.
New Mexico Democrat Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham was immensely proud of herself for creating a “mini-Green New Deal” for her state in 2019. Accordingly, coal-fired power plants were shut down without any regard to how their electrical output would be replaced. In February, PNM, the state’s power utility, announced that New Mexico will likely experience blackouts this summer. What a shock. No pun intended.
The cost of the green agenda is already higher than we should be willing to pay. Soaring gas prices, inflation, and now an unreliable energy grid and the thousands of deaths that will come with it are all outcomes of the Left’s ruinous plan to save the environment and thereby save us from ourselves.
But these aren’t painful trade-offs on the way toward an energy-efficient Valhalla. There’s no such future in store for us, because the Left can’t make it happen. All these empty promises offer us is more misery — and given the ineptitude of the current administration, we’ve had quite enough of that already.