Grid Reliability and Resilience Improve with More Low-Carbon Resources
WASHINGTON – Bailing out costly giant power plants will not improve the electric grid’s resiliency but it will increase customer costs and pollution, the director of the Sustainable FERC Project housed within the Natural Resources Defense Council told a House subcommittee today.
In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy, Senior Attorney John Moore said “baseload” power, often used to describe large coal and nuclear power plants, is not a technically based reliability standard, a unique grid service, nor an attribute of grid resilience even with a 90-day power supply.
“But that doesn’t matter to DOE, which is sowing confusion and suggesting the power grid will be imperiled if we don’t pay large subsidies to keep specific types of generators afloat,” Moore said. “We can achieve a higher level of reliability at a lower cost and with less pollution by defining reliability and resiliency needs first.”
Moore said continuing the transformation of the nation’s power grid to facilitate a low-carbon future will improve reliability and resilience in the long run by reducing the risk of extreme weather and other disruptive events.
A copy of Moore’s written testimony can be found here: https://www.nrdc.org/resources/john-moores-testimony-house-subcommittee-energy
Moore has posted a related blog at: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/john-moore/our-transforming-grid-focus-reliability-not-fuels
Information on the Sustainable FERC Project coalition can be found at http://sustainableferc.org/
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