Despite the best attempts of the Obama and Biden administrations, coal power survives as part of America’s energy mix. And it’s a good thing too. Over the weekend, with temperatures dropping and power demand spiking to keep the heat on in Americans’ homes, coal played an integral part in supplying the extra demand.

According to The Wall Street Journal editors, “Early Sunday morning, coal accounted for some 40% of power in the Midwest’s MISO grid, 24% in the eastern U.S. PJM Interconnection and 18% in Texas, with most of the rest coming from natural gas and nuclear.”

In preparation for the storm, Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued orders to use backup generation to assist the grid during the storm and its aftermath. He wrote:

The United States is facing a national energy emergency. Reliability Coordinators and Balancing Authorities play an essential role in addressing the consequences of this emergency.

As President Trump noted, generation capacity is “far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs.”1 Resource inadequacy is especially problematic during prolonged winter cold snaps when additional capacity shortages can quickly cause reliability failures.
2 The consequences can be severe. For example, in 2021, Winter Storm Uri resulted in billions of dollars in damage and over 200 deaths.3
We cannot stand passively in the face of the immediate and pressing need for generation resources necessary to preserve lives, support the economy, and ensure national security.

Despite the years of bad policy that led us to this point, there is a solution to this problem. Across the country there are gigawatts of readily available backup generation that have remained largely untapped until now. This backup generation can and should be used to save American lives and avoid billions of dollars in economic devastation, as energy subtraction policies of the previous administration cause acute scarcity events.

To support this effort, I have directed the Department to prepare to issue orders, pursuant to my statutory authority under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, which will ensure that the tens of gigawatts of available backup generation, which would otherwise stand idle, is available during emergency conditions.

When Reliability Coordinators and/or Balancing Authorities notify us, even merely by phone call, that there is an expected emergency warranting the issuance of a 202(c) order, I will review the facts and, if appropriate, authorize the Reliability Coordinators and Balancing Authorities to direct backup generation facilities to run as a last resort before declaring an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) 3, thereby avoiding potential blackouts.

The letter follows Wright’s first year in office as Secretary of Energy, in which he saved numerous coal power plants from being shut down and worked to increase power generation capacity on America’s grids. During the storm, Wright used his authority to allow backup generation to operate on multiple regional power grids.

The risk posed by the storm was an example of how badly the radical green agenda of the Biden and Obama administrations has harmed the American power grid’s reliability. Wright’s office prepared a report earlier this year detailing the damage done. The highlights include:

WASHINGTON— The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released its Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security. The report fulfills Section 3(b) of President Trump’s Executive Order, Strengthening The Reliability And Security Of The United States Electric Grid, by delivering a uniform methodology to identify at-risk regions and guide Federal reliability interventions.

The analysis reveals that existing generation retirements and delays in adding new firm capacity, driven by the radical green agenda of past administrations, will lead to a surge in power outages and a growing mismatch between electricity demand and supply, particularly from artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data center growth, threatening America’s energy security.

“This report affirms what we already know: The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas,” Secretary Wright said. “In the coming years, America’s reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power. President Trump’s administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure. If we are going to keep the lights on, win the AI race, and keep electricity prices from skyrocketing, the United States must unleash American energy.”

Highlights of the Report:

• The status quo is unsustainable. DOE’s analysis shows that, if current retirement schedules and incremental additions remain unchanged, most regions will face unacceptable reliability risks within five years and the Nation’s electrical power grid will be unable to meet expected demand for AI, data centers, manufacturing and industrialization while keeping the cost of living low for all Americans. Staying on the present course would undermine U.S. economic growth, national security, and leadership in emerging technologies.
• Grid growth must match the pace of AI innovation. Electricity demand from AI-driven data centers and advanced manufacturing is rising at a record pace. The magnitude and speed of projected load growth cannot be met with existing approaches to load addition and grid management. Radical change is needed to unleash the transformative potential of innovation.
• With projected load growth, retirements increase the risk of power outages by 100 times in 2030. Allowing 104 GW of firm generation to retire by 2030—without timely replacement—could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation. Modeling shows annual outage hours could increase from single digits today to more than 800 hours per year. Such a surge would leave millions of households and businesses vulnerable. We must renew a focus on firm generation and continue to reverse radical green ideology in order to address this risk.
• Planned supply falls short, reliability at risk. The 104 GW of plant retirements are replaced by 209 GW of new generation by 2030; however, only 22 GW comes from firm baseload generation sources. Even assuming no retirements, the model found outage risk in several regions rises more than 30-fold, proving the queue alone cannot close the dependable-capacity deficit.
• Old tools won’t solve new problems. Traditional peak-hour tests to evaluate resource adequacy do not sufficiently account for growing dependence on neighboring grids. At a minimum, modern methods of evaluating resource adequacy need to incorporate frequency, magnitude, and duration of power outages, move beyond exclusively analyzing peak load time periods, and develop integrated models to enable proper analysis of increasing reliance on neighboring grids.

DOE’s report identifies regions most vulnerable to outages under various weather and retirement scenarios and offers capacity targets needed to restore acceptable reliability. The methodology also informs the potential use of DOE’s emergency authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act.

Action Line: With the onset of artificial intelligence, America needs more power than ever. It needs an all-of-the-above power generation surge that puts Americans’ standard of living and costs ahead of the radical green agenda. The nuclear renaissance is part of that. Allowing more natural gas pipelines into power-hungry areas like New England is another. Using tried and true coal to fight power emergencies is important as well. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.

Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.