“We have an politicized “all the above” electricity policy to the detriment of natural gas direct use. If energy diversity for electrical generation is desirable, then alternatives to electricity be also be desirable. This is especially true when considering diversity of energy delivery mechanisms (pipelines and wires) and the fact that customer outages are predominantly due to downed wires, not generation outages.”
Last month, US Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry held a hearing before the House Energy & Commerce Committee. None examined the very important issue of over-electrification.where public policies discriminate against direct-use natural gas.
The concept of an “all-the-above energy policy” was a recurring theme of Secretary Perry’s hearing with the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Thursday October 12 [1] This is a popular fiction; like another of Secretary Perry’s reoccurring themes that energy is not a free market.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: Mark Krebs has been a leading advocate (see here) for free-market decision-making between natural gas and electricity in homes and places of business, challenging the ‘deep decarbonization’ push of energy interventionists to disciminate against fossil fuels at point of use. This is the first of a two-part post.]
“Grid reliability should not eclipse energy reliability; especially during weather emergencies. Yet, much of the discussion looks like more of the same rent-seeking by interests looking for rebuilding damaged electricity infrastructure with inherently unreliable wind and solar generation based ‘microgrids’.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is undertaking an in-depth review of the laws and regulations affecting electric energy. Much of that review is through a series of hearing that started last July. The objectives for this series of hearings were officially stated as follows:
… Continue ReadingToday, the nation’s electricity industry is undergoing a period of transformation due to technological innovation and market competition, creating tremendous benefits to American consumers.
“‘Deregulated’ markets have introduced a mechanism that virtually always selects wind and solar over coal, natural gas, or nuclear power. Whether this was a deliberate effort to favor wind and solar to cut CO2 emissions to combat global warming is unknown, but the effect of preferential dispatching has been to close fossil fuel power plants, as well as nuclear plants.”
The preferential dispatch system used by many RTO/ISO grid operators favors wind and solar to the exclusion of critical baseload power from fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.
Preferential dispatching is destructive because it results in the closure of fossil fuel and nuclear power plants–the reliable and scale economy energies that form the backbone of the modern electricity grid.
It could also be called discriminatory because it discriminates against baseload power.…
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