DV Journal

When the U.S. Senate approved the Inflation Reduction Act, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) celebrated the legislation as “the most ambitious climate bill the Senate has ever passed.”

Casey said he supported the Biden administration’s goal of reducing power from coal and natural gas sources. “It will shore up the U.S.’s place as a clean energy producer and reduce our greenhouse emissions by 40 percent by 2030,” Casey said, “while investing in the coal communities that powered our nation for generations.”

But last week, senators on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee heard a very different story. The retirement of fossil fuel electricity production and the lack of reliable renewables to replace it are putting America’s grid at risk. That includes the possibility of rolling blackouts and widespread deaths from a loss of power.

For example, the regional grid operator PJM projected 40 gigawatts of electric production to be retired by 2030, about one-fifth of its current installed capacity. More than half of that loss comes from what it termed “policy-driven retirements.”

Last week’s committee hearing was called to “examine the reliability and resiliency of electric service in the United States in light of recent reliability assessments and alerts.” The news was ominous.

James Robb, president & CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, told senators the electric power system “is absolutely at an inflection point right now.”

The grid, Robb said, needs to be able to hold up especially well when demand surges, and residents call for huge amounts of electricity. He argued that novel new forms of electricity production “can’t do that nearly as well as large, spinning mass generation.”

“And that’s why the loss of coal plants and natural gas plants and nuclear plants is so concerning from a grid reliability perspective,” he said.

“Grid transformation” has occurred throughout the U.S. for years as increasing numbers of reliable coal-fired power plants are retired, and renewable energy methods take their place. Activists claim the rapid shift away from carbon-based fuels to green energy is necessary to prevent the theoretical effects of climate change in the coming century.

David Tudor, CEO of the midwestern Associated Electric Cooperative, predicted the rapid retirement of fossil fuel power plants could bring about population-level deaths in the U.S.

“My concern is, you’ve got a gap period here that we have this push for new renewables and this push to shut down plants that work, and there’s nothing there in the middle to save us,” he said.

“I fear we are going to have blackouts, and I’m afraid we’re going to see a significant number of lives lost.”

Grid warning signs have been flashing at the state level as well. A panel of experts told the Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee last month the state and the region were facing near-term power shortages due to the retirement of legacy plants in favor of newer, untested renewable source generation.

State Sen. Gene Yaw warned at the hearing that “short-sighted environmental policies” have “forced fossil fuel plants into nonexistence, resulting in fewer reliable energy sources to shoulder the burden of increased demand on Pennsylvania’s electrical grid.”

Also of concern is the number of jobs in Pennsylvania and elsewhere supported directly or indirectly by fossil fuels. A recent report found that fossil fuels, directly and indirectly, support over 400,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone and millions across the country.

Neither of Pennsylvania’s federal senators appeared concerned about the possibility of electricity shortages in the state or nationwide. Casey, who did not respond to requests for comment, has supported the use of “tax credits for companies to build American-made clean energy facilities” and called upon the state to “increase the use of renewable energy” to address the climate crisis.

Sen. John Fetterman, meanwhile—who also did not respond to requests for comment—has claimed that the U.S. needs to “transition to clean energy as quickly as possible.” The freshman Democratic senator has shown a willingness to play politics on the question of energy, having reversed his position on fracking during his contentious run for Senate last year. But he has also supported extreme policies like carbon caps as a way to mitigate the possible dangers of climate change.

After the Senate hearing, Rich Nolan of the National Mining Association released a statement saying it was “impossible to listen to the testimony this morning, including from the nation’s top reliability regulator and from the CEO of our largest grid operator, and not conclude that we’re pushing aside existing, dispatchable generation – namely the nation’s coal capacity – far too quickly.”

“We are already in a grid reliability crisis, and the EPA’s regulatory onslaught is making an extraordinarily challenging situation all but unmanageable,” he said.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said most electrical generation in the U.S. continues to come from coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, and petroleum. Just around one-fifth of the total generation comes from renewables.

Robb told the senators his industry is doing its part on the infrastructure side to move the power, but that doesn’t solve the problem if there’s no power to move.

“The electric transmission grid is highly reliable and resilient,” he said. “Yet the risk profile to customers is steadily increasing.”

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Five and a half.

That’s the percentage of full- and part-time jobs in the U.S. economy attributable directly and indirectly to fossil fuels—a massive number, just under eleven million in total.

Those figures are from a timely report demonstrating just how much the U.S. benefits from fossil fuel-related employment—and how much it stands to potentially lose a green-new-deal policies loom on the horizon.

The analysis by consulting firm PwC carried out for the American Petroleum Institute found that the oil and natural gas industry’s “direct, indirect, and induced impacts” on the U.S. economy “amounted to 10.8 million full-time and part-time jobs and accounted for 5.4 percent of total U.S. employment in 2021.”

The industry’s “total impact on labor income,” meanwhile, was valued at “$908.7 billion, or 6.4 percent of the U.S. national labor income in 2021,” while the total impact on US GDP the same year was “nearly $1.8 trillion, accounting for 7.6 percent of the national total.”

Those economic benefits face an uncertain future as the Biden administration pushes aggressive green-energy policies that directly target fossil fuels. Critics say these anti-fossil-fuel measures also put the reliability of the U.S. electric grid at risk.

New rules by the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, will soon begin mandating gargantuan emissions reductions from U.S. power plants, with experts warning of potential brownouts if less reliable sources like wind and solar can’t meet demand.

It could also threaten millions of U.S. jobs. Stephanie Wissman, the executive director of the American Petroleum Institute’s Pennsylvania branch, said U.S. energy regulation significantly hampers the ability of the industry to create even more employment.

“Job growth in any sector depends upon reforming our onerous regulatory processes,” she said. “Getting a project through a federal environmental review – one hurdle among many – now takes an average of 4.5 years.”

“As global energy demand is projected to increase, policies should support American energy and infrastructure development and the millions of skilled workers across the country who produce and deliver the energy that powers our everyday lives,” she added.

“What’s needed now is comprehensive permitting reform.”

Advocates of energy reform have argued that policymakers can both move the energy grid to renewable fuels while providing relief for workers thrown out of employment due to industry disruptions. Robert Routh, a public policy and regulatory attorney for the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council, pointed to a recent state-level proposal to create an “Energy Communities Trust Fund” to address those concerns.

That measure, he said, would create grant programs for “workforce development and worker training; supplemental unemployment compensation for displaced energy workers; and funding to school districts or municipalities affected by the closure of an energy facility.”

Whether or not politicians are capable of patching the job losses from green energy policies remains to be seen. Government attempts to compensate for lost economic activity often come up woefully short, as the U.S. saw during the COVID crisis when the federal government attempted to make up for billions and billions of dollars in lost economic activity by giving Americans payments ranging from $600 to $1,400.

Fossil fuels, of course, remain firmly embedded in the complex web of the U.S. economy. PwC noted that oil and natural gas exploration and production involve, variously, the mining sector, the manufacturing sector, the transportation sector, the utilities sector, and the wholesale and retail trade sectors.

Joe Trotter with the American Legislative Exchange Council said policymakers must tread carefully when looking to radically change something as critical and as massive as the U.S. energy industry.

“The hardworking folks that keep the lights on for America and our allies have families they need to feed and provide for every single day,” he said, “so any attempt at transitioning the workforce needs to be absolutely seamless, or else workers and their dependents will suffer.”

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“At the current trajectory, PJM is not going to have sufficient power to meet the demands of consumers, and prices are likely to increase.”

That dire warning came from Glen Thomas, president of the industry group PJM Power Providers, at a state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee briefing earlier this week addressing the pressing concern of electrical grid reliability in Pennsylvania.

Grid operator PJM distributes power across 13 states from Illinois to North Carolina from its headquarters in suburban Philadelphia. The company doesn’t generate electricity or operate power plants. Instead, its primary mission is to “ensure the safety, reliability, and security of the bulk electric power system,” including here in Pennsylvania.

And that mission, Thomas warned lawmakers, is in danger as reliable power sources continue to be retired from the grid—something that’s occurring “faster than anticipated.”

Thomas told DVJournal that “demand is increasing, supply is retiring, and it’s not being replaced by the quantity of assets necessary to sustain reliability.”

“It’s a pretty simple supply-and-demand issue,” he said. “Electricity markets are complicated, but the problem itself is that demand is going up, and supply is leaving and not being replaced.”

At the briefing, committee Chairman Gene Yaw (R-Bradford) blamed green-energy politics for the pace of power source retirements.

“Short-sighted environmental policies have forced fossil fuel plants into nonexistence, resulting in fewer reliable energy sources to shoulder the burden of increased demand on Pennsylvania’s electrical grid,” Yaw said.

James Locher, the chief operating officer of Key Con LLC, also spoke at the briefing, laying out how much Pennsylvania households still rely on fossil fuel-generated energy. Key Con LLC manages the large Keystone and Conemaugh coal plants in western Pennsylvania. Locher said these plants deliver “3,400 MW of reliable power” into the PJM system.

And during weather events like 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott, his plant becomes absolutely essential. As the cyclone bomb drove temperatures down and demand up, PJM called for customers to conserve electricity use as it struggled to find power sources to meet demand.

“Without adequate and comparably reliable replacement capacity accounting for the contributions of Keystone, Conemaugh, and other coal-fired units,” Locher said, “future electric power system failures in PJM are more likely during similar extreme weather events.”

PJM itself has been undertaking extensive research to determine the scope of the grid retirement crisis it is currently facing. In research published earlier this year, a company analysis predicted a whopping 21 percent of its “current installed capacity” could be out of commission within seven years, with the largest share of those closures, PJM estimated, potentially coming from government regulations.

The company estimates “40 GW of existing generation … at risk of retirement by 2030.” Breaking it down, PJM projected “6 GW of 2022 deactivations, 6 GW of announced retirements, 25 GW of potential policy-driven retirements, and 3 GW of potential economic retirements.”

Thomas said it could be difficult to determine the effects of environmental policies on costs versus outright closures of plants. “If an environmental regulation changes, and that increases the costs associated with a unit’s ability to produce power, and it’s forced to retire, is that a policy retirement, or an economic retirement?”

“Very few of these policies are mandating retirement,” he posited, “they’re just increasing costs associated with these facilities until they’re no longer economically viable.”

Demand will also rise in the near future, the PJM analysis said, ranging from 1.4 percent to localized 7 percent surges. And what the grid loses in legacy generation, the analysis said, it will not make up for in next-gen renewables.

Thomas told DVJournal that “right now, the market rules are set up in such a way that most units are receiving an economic signal to retire.”

“If we can change those economic rules so that those economic signals change, I believe there is an opportunity to turn this around,” he said. “But on the current trajectory, with the current rules in place, this region is going to be short of power” in the next few years.

PJM’s “New Services Queue” consists “primarily of renewables (94 percent) and gas (6 percent),” the analysis said. The “historical rate of completion for renewable projects has been approximately 5 percent,” PJM noted, and “the current pace of new entry would be insufficient to keep up with expected retirements and demand growth by 2030.”

Yaw pointed out that Pennsylvania’s access to electricity isn’t determined by what happens in its borders.

“What other states do has a great effect on the grid. For example, any of the [PJM] states that say they’re going to go completely green or clean or whatever you want to call it — they say they’re not going to use any more fossil fuel. Well, that means they’re going to rely on someone else to provide power for them in those times when these clean and green energy projects don’t work. They’re intermittent; they depend on the time of day. The example I use is: Where does the power come from for a solar array at 3 o’clock in the morning?”

Yaw said the effect of current and upcoming plant closures could take as much energy off the grid to equal about 40,000 acres of solar panels. “We don’t have 40,000 acres of solar panels in the works. I’m not even sure where we would put 40,000 acres of solar panels.”

“If we keep giving PJM the policy that we’re doing by switching over without a plan behind it, I don’t know what the solution is,” he said.

“There are two solutions: There will be certain times when you operate your appliances or charge your car or whatever, or there will be rolling blackouts. Neither of those sounds like they’re very good options to me.”

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A Thursday hearing of the state’s Philadelphia Liquid Natural Gas Export Task Force saw industry experts argue for the construction of a natural gas terminal at the Port of Philadelphia, with one advocate claiming natural gas is “necessary to power the economies of the world” as more and more countries move toward renewables.

The Pennsylvania House Republican Caucus said on its website the hearing was meant to “receive testimony from various stakeholders regarding safety and security considerations for a potential liquefied natural gas export terminal in or around the Port of Philadelphia.”

David Cuff, a captain with the Pilots’ Association For the Bay And River Delaware, whose organization is “responsible for the safe navigation of commercial vessels on the Delaware River and Bay and its tributaries,” told the panel ships transporting liquid natural gas to the Philadelphia port would pose no special safety challenges.

“We treat every ship and handle every ship the same,” he said. “We bring ships into the port of Philadelphia with 12,000 containers on them. We’re not told what’s on those containers. What we care about is if the ship is safe and handles well.”

Cuff suggested there was little reason to be concerned about traffic volume surrounding a new LNG terminal.

“Speaking to the pilots and the Coast Guard in sector Maryland with Cove Point, it does not disrupt any traffic down there,” he said.

“This is stuff that we’re all learning,” he added. “But it does not disrupt any flow coming in and out of Norfolk or the Port of Baltimore.”

Lisa Himber, president of the Maritime Exchange for the Delaware River and Bay, told the panel the terminal’s economic benefits could be hugely impactful for the surrounding region. She pointed to the Port of Philadelphia’s already-outsized effect on employment.

“An exchange study from 2021 found that over 156,000 jobs depend upon the regional port, and over 50,000 of those are directly related,” she said.

“The foremost benefit [of the LNG terminal] from our perspective must be the economic impact,” she noted.

The task force was created last November by outgoing Gov. Tom Wolf. Talks of an LNG facility in or near Philadelphia have been in the works for years.

Former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who left Congress earlier this year and now serves on the leadership council of the pro-gas group Natural Allies, argued that natural gas can help with “defeating global coal use, increasing American competitiveness in the world, enhancing our global security and ultimately driving down global carbon emissions.”

“In the absence of natural gas, the world burns dirtier forms of energy, primarily coal,” Ryan argued.

“Unless decision makers are willing to advance permitting reforms and approve the infrastructure necessary to move natural gas where it’s needed,” he said, then it will be “nearly impossible to achieve our global climate goals.”

Ryan pointed to recent energy shockwaves in Europe, where officials were reduced to “restarting mothballed coal plants to keep the lights on following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It’s also true here at home where regions like New England have faced natural gas shortages each winter after years of political posture and blocking new natural gas pipeline expansions.

“Pennsylvania sits at the edge of one of the largest natural gas supplies in the world,” Ryan pointed out, “making it a huge economic benefit to capitalize on LNG potential.”

He argued natural gas is “necessary to power the economies of the world as we scale up renewables.”

Not all attendees were supportive of the terminal proposal. Adam Nagel, the campaign manager for the clean energy nonprofit Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, said his organization has “actively opposed the expansion of LNG facilities” in the state “through advocacy and litigation.”

Nagel argued that there was an “inherent danger in the installation and operation of an export terminal in the Port of Philadelphia.” He said that an accident at a gas terminal could pose critical risks to communities surrounding the Philadelphia port.

“Serious concerns exist with the city of Philadelphia’s ability to manage crises,” Nagel said, pointing to the recent spillage of toxic chemicals in nearby Bucks County.

State Sen. Anthony Williams (D-Delaware/Philadelphia) asked Ryan how he would respond to Nagel’s claims about the risks of transporting and storing natural gas.

“We’ve been exporting [LNG],” Ryan responded. “It’s on the seas; it’s safe, it’s reliable. No major catastrophes have happened. This is just something that we need to continue to do.”

Nagel admitted his organization would still oppose the terminal even if safety concerns were addressed. “There’s still the question of environmental safety and security and public health, safety and security,” he said.

“From a public health and environmental health, safety, and security standpoint, I do not believe we could ever get to a place where we would support such a terminal in the Port of Philadelphia,” he said.

Dustin Meyer, the vice president of natural gas markets at the American Petroleum Institute, echoed Tim Ryan’s earlier suggestion that natural gas is only one way an economy should be powered.

State Rep. Joe Hohenstesin asked Meyer whether regulators should “take it on faith and trust that the natural gas industry is going to also see itself as the bridge fuel to renewables.” Meyer countered that the natural gas industry “would never suggest that natural gas needs to be or should be a hundred percent of electricity generation.

“I think most people would agree is that the electricity generation portfolio of any given region or state or country is going to be much more diverse 10 years from now, 20 years from now than what it is today,” he said.

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“We’re going to need a lot more American ships, so I hope everyone’s ready to keep working.”

That was the message this week from David Hardy, group executive vice president at Danish energy company Ørsted, whose company has commissioned the construction of a massive water vessel that can act as a high technology support vessel for regional wind farms wind farm.

Ørsted, along with Boston-based energy provider Eversource, have tapped Louisiana-based Edison Chouest to build the ultra-modern ship to help ferry renewable wind power into critical Northeast markets. The corporations say the craft will lead the U.S. into a new era of clean energy production.

Company leaders gathered at the Chouest shipyard in Terrebonne Parish on Tuesday to offer a glimpse at the Eco Edison, the first such wind-farming vessel purpose-built in the United States.

Its construction is taking place in an area of the world well-known for its high levels of oil drilling and rig activity. The federal government states that around 3,200 oil and gas structures of varying sizes “remain active” in the Gulf of Mexico.

Upon its construction, the 260-foot-long ship will have taken about 500,000 man-hours to produce. It is expected to sail to its home base in Port Jefferson, New York, in 2024.

On Tuesday Hardy touted what he said were the promising benefits to vessels like the Eco Edison, claiming that the growing reliance on renewable energies like wind allows the U.S. “greater energy independence from adversarial countries like China and Russia.”

“Wind energy is an increasingly important part of America’s overall energy mix, and we’re proud to be building, new energy projects that will power, millions of US homes and businesses,” he said.

The ship will be crewed by around five dozen workers drawn from the northeast region to which it will be providing power. The onboard technicians, who the company says will work a two weeks on/two weeks off schedule, will have access to on-ship entertainment and recreation facilities including a gym and a movie theater.

The ship will essentially function as an at-sea headquarters and base of operations for the works servicing and maintaining around 200 wind turbines off the New England coast.

“This shipyard and this vessel are living proof that the American offshore wind industry is creating jobs today,” Hardy said at the event.

Renewable energy at present comprises just over one-fifth of all electricity generation sources in the United States, according to data from the Department of Energy.  Fossil fuels—overwhelmingly coal and natural gas—make up 60 percent of the U.S. energy profile.

Wind, meanwhile, represents nearly half of the total U.S. renewable electricity capture, with 10.2 percent of renewable energy coming from wind farms. Hydroelectric comes in second at 6.2 percent.

House Majority Leader and Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise said at the event that regarding the U.S. energy profile, “it’s not a question of which source of energy we need.”

“The world is going to need more energy, and we’re going to need all forms of energy,” he said, arguing that the U.S. has “been at the front end of innovations” including those in renewable energy sources.

Beyond its role in next-gen energy technology, Ørsted has touted the numerous technological advantages the ship possesses to carry out its duties, including a “motion-compensated gangway” that will permit crews easy and safe access to wind turbines. A “daughter” ship will also be onboard to ensure easy ferrying of crews from the vessel to work locations.

Mike Ausere, a development vice president with Eversource, said at Tuesday’s event that the Eco Edison was just “one of the many ships needed for offshore wind.” He argued the project “represents the beginning of a renewed era of American global economic leadership.”

Hardy, meanwhile, optimistically predicted the ongoing creation of renewable energy jobs for many years down the road.

“We’re putting people to work today, and we’ll put the next generation of workers to work as well,” he said.

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One year, $663 million.

That is the price tag Pennsylvania’s nonpartisan Independent Fiscal Office said will likely result if and when the state joins the controversial Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as Gov. Josh Shapiro has indicated it will.

Shapiro’s administration “estimates that proceeds from this initiative will total $663 million for fiscal year 2023-24,” the IFO said in its state Senate Appropriations Committee report last month.

The IFO noted that a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection estimate put the number tens of millions of dollars higher, at $688 million. Either way, the green-energy plan will increase energy costs by billions over the next decade.

At last month’s appropriations hearing, Montgomery County state Sen. Tracy Pennycuick (R-Bucks/Montgomery) quizzed Independent Fiscal Office Director Matthew Knittel on RGGI’s potential effects on job development in the state.

“We are a net producer of energy, which is great,” Pennycuick said. “But if we were to enter into RGGI, how would that affect our ability to attract new businesses to Pennsylvania?”

Knittel did not answer the question directly. “Like other levies on energy, I would assume that those costs would be passed forward to the ultimate consumers of the energy,” he said.

Asked by Sen. Elder Vogel “how [the money] would be collected,” Knittel said, “The RGGI entity runs the auction process, they would collect the revenues, and then redistribute them out to the states.”

Knittel said the money would be funneled into the Pennsylvania Clean Air Fund, after which it would be distributed throughout the state.

Vogel told the Delaware Valley Journal the state’s adoption of RGGI “will certainly raise energy prices, which I believe will burden both current Pennsylvania businesses and prospective businesses interested in establishing roots here, as well as vastly increase the number of jobs lost across our state.”

Vogel admitted that “it is unclear at this time if these increased energy costs would indeed be a reasonable trade-off because we don’t truly know what the impact on the environment will actually be.”

At the hearing, Senate Appropriations Chair Sen. Scott Martin (R-Lancaster) told DEP Acting Executive Deputy Secretary Jessica Shirley the state has been “fighting this battle over RGGI for a very long time.” 

“There’s a lot of ideas out there,” Martin said. “We want to be part of that conversation with you. It’s really important now more than ever. People are facing inflationary costs now.”

As a gubernatorial candidate, Shapiro originally indicated he opposed the implementation of RGGI in the state. Since taking office, he has moved to consider enacting it.

Former Gov. Tom Wolf had previously tried to implement RGGI via executive directives. The state Commonwealth Court blocked the move last summer, with the program’s adoption in the state still tied up in litigation as of this month.

Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York) told DVJournal the Shapiro administration planned on “going it alone” on RGGI.

“This is something they’re trying to enter us into without the consent of the General Assembly,” she said. “Every other state has done it expressly through their legislatures. From a process point of view, I’m really concerned.”

Phillips said the state assembly tried to litigate the potential unilateral implementation of RGGI. “We were not successful,” she said.

Sen. Greg Rothman (R-Cumberland/Dauphin/Perry) echoed Phillips-Hill’s criticism of potential unilateral RGGI implementation.

“I do not [support it],” he told DVJournal. “And even if I did, it should be joined with legislature’s consent or by legislation.”

“Obligating the citizens of Pennsylvania to pay higher energy costs without accountability is undemocratic,” he added.

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When it comes to moving fossil fuels as safely as possible from where they are produced to where they are needed, the data is clear that pipelines are the best choice, particularly over long distances.

“As long as we’ve made the choice to use natural gas, oil — name your fossil fuel resource — the only practical and safe way to move it at scale is to move it through pipelines,” said Keith Coyle, a D.C.-based attorney who advises clients throughout the United States on energy matters.

But the National Transportation Safety Board believes more can be done, in particular, to protect people and property from pipeline explosions. At issue is the potential impact radius (PIR) for a pipeline. While explosions are rare when compared to the millions of miles of active pipelines in the U.S., they do happen.

An analysis highlighted by E&E News looked at 17 pipeline explosions between 2017 and 2022. One such case was in 2019 when an explosion in Kentucky killed a woman in a nearby mobile home approximately 640 feet from the blast.

In 2000, 12 family members died in New Mexico after a pipeline ruptured and caused a blast 675 feet from where they were camping. The federal government considers 600 feet to be a safe distance, and now officials want regulators to update their calculations.

“Pipeline operators must know and understand their pipeline systems and use appropriate technologies and procedures to address risk to prevent pipeline failures while considering the inherent limitations of technology,” wrote Tristan H. Brown, Deputy Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) at Department of Transportation in a November 2022 letter. “PHMSA prescribes factors that must be addressed to mitigate risk and conducts inspections to ensure adequate measures are carried out effectively.”

That includes potentially recalculating the formula for an acceptable PIR.

But energy insiders note that, however necessary this update may be, the Biden administration has been openly hostile to the fossil fuel industry from the outset. There is concern that the legitimate debate about re-calculating the PIR might be used to make siting more difficult for future fossil-fuel infrastructure projects. Siting is already one of the most challenging aspects of expanding pipeline capacity.

“If regulators are looking at this from an analytical perspective, and what is the actual risk, that’s OK,” said Coyle. “But if they’re using it to push an agenda, to make pipelines appear less safe than they actually are, well — look, when you actually look at the data, by any measure, this is the safest choice. In terms of injuries, fatalities, the amount of product moved, etc.”

No system is entirely without risk, of course, but the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) says consumers need to understand that pipelines are safe and “accidents are rare.”

“According to the most recent numbers available, 99.99 percent of gas and crude oil is moved safely through interstate transmission pipelines,” says AFPM. “This achievement is the result of a culture that values safety above all, throughout the pipeline lifecycle,” which they say includes “pipeline operators constantly monitoring pipeline performance using state-of-the-art technology.”

But an administration that began with President Joe Biden killing a major pipeline project — the Keystone XL — and a plunge in energy leases has supporters of fossil fuel production wary about regulatory changes.

If you ask Dan Kish at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), onerous government regulations are precisely the reason people are now pushing for new calculations on the “safe distance” from pipelines.

“The goal is to make it so expensive or so impossible to use any of the U.S.’s world-class energy resources that Americans are forced to use renewable energy technology, which unfortunately only works part-time and is largely dependent upon Chinese production,” says Kish.

Still, news outlets such as Politico note energy industry groups have often been the ones to dictate policy. Pointing to a 2015 Politico investigation, Politico’s Arianna Skibell wrote that PHMSA “lacked the resources to inspect the country’s millions of miles of oil and gas lines, and that it had granted the industry it regulates significant power to influence the rulemaking process.”

“In the last decade, more than 2,600 pipeline leaks killed 122 people across the country, causing more than $4 million in damage and releasing 26.6 billion cubic feet of planet-warming pollution,” wrote Skibell, citing a 2022 study by U.S. PIRG Education Fund.

Once again, Coyle notes, what is the alternative? Rail and trucks have their own safety risks, and shipping is limited both by geography and the Jones Act, which makes moving oil and gas between U.S. ports nearly impossible.

And Kish sees political opportunism at work.

“One week it’s banning gas stoves, the next it’s a proposal that would make it impossible to build and operate pipelines.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this article misidentified the NTSB as the federal agency that regulates pipelines. We regret the error.

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For an alternative viewpoint see: Point: Nuclear Fusion Is the Energy Source of the Future

“Still decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away.”

That was the sobering refrain from the recent nuclear fusion announcement that has already taken decades and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to get to this point of—wait for it—still being decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is thwarting domestic energy development and Congress can’t pass bipartisan permitting reform to make energy siting and transmission more predictable. All this while the nation suffers from the imperfect storm of gasoline and natural gas costs, increasing frequency of blackouts and brownouts, and a greater reliance on foreign energy sources.

Considering the genuine challenges our nation is facing, the U.S. should focus its resources on tangible solutions that are available now.

Around the world, more than 2 billion people live in energy poverty, and millions of Americans struggle to pay for electricity and transportation fuels. Separately, the war in Ukraine has highlighted an over-reliance on Russian natural gas in European countries — a gap that U.S. natural gas could help fill. In fact, the administration has promised more U.S. gas to England and other allied nations despite a history of making it more difficult for U.S. energy companies to extract and transport those resources domestically.

And not only is the federal government an obstacle, but some political and business leaders, like Michael Bloomberg, are underwriting public relations campaigns to end the use of traditional energy sources while they fly on private jets, sail on yachts, and live in mansions. They do not appreciate the struggle for affordable energy, potable water, and good jobs that most citizens of the country, and the world, seek.

The International Energy Administration and the U.S. Energy Information Administration acknowledge petroleum and natural gas will be among the most widely needed fuels for at least the next 50 years, and likely longer. Fuels that are necessary to drive vehicles, heat homes, and cook food.

In addition to leveraging North American petroleum and natural gas supplies, the U.S. has an opportunity to promote the advancement of traditional renewable energy sources. To his credit, President Joe Biden has presided over the largest deployment of solar and wind in U.S. history. Continued investment, coupled with a robust natural gas industry, is the best way to keep our economy strong, reduce carbon emissions and expand our electricity generation capacity.

Biden, working with Congress, secured record investments to accelerate renewable energy sources through landmark laws like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Through his Cabinet, departments have established important goals to build America’s budding offshore wind energy industry and increase the generation capacity of solar to help us reduce carbon emissions by the end of this decade. It is a challenge, but one that is within reach.

It is important that the United States, and specifically the Department of Energy, support new and innovative technologies to help us reach a clean energy future. A future that nuclear fusion may be a part of.

However, it is critical that we leverage our current resources to meet the energy demands of today—both domestic and global—by allowing U.S. energy companies to develop and transport the traditional energy resources that we have domestically. This will help lower the cost of energy, grow our economy and support our allies while greening our environment — all without waiting decades and spending hundreds of billions more dollars hoping for the best possible result from a cool science project.

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For an alternate point of view see:  Counterpoint:  On Energy Policy, Let’s Live in the Here and Now

Last month, nuclear fusion topped headlines around the world when scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced an essential milestone in developing this nascent technology. They achieved “ignition,” meaning more energy came out of a reaction than was needed to make the reaction happen in the first place. Despite some significant remaining challenges, there are strong reasons to believe a fusion-powered future awaits us.

Achieving ignition was only the latest in a series of fusion breakthroughs. For instance, in early 2022, news sources announced that a Chinese reactor maintained a fusion reaction for 17 minutes at 158 million degrees Fahrenheit. That’s about five times the temperature of the sun.

One reason fusion is so promising is that it has the potential to revolutionize the way we power our economy. In theory, fusion can produce almost unlimited energy. The amount of energy released in a nuclear fusion reaction can be many times that of a chemical reaction. Fusion is also carbon-free, which is why it is sometimes labeled as the “holy grail” of clean energy.

There are still major hurdles facing this technology. Some are technological. Attaining ignition was important but not a game-changer, and many more such breakthroughs will need to happen, including improving the efficiency of the reaction many times over.

That said, we know that fusion works. It’s the process that powers stars like the sun. So, while the industry’s obstacles are significant, we have plenty of reason to believe they will be overcome eventually. The main question is when.

Another hurdle is whether fusion can be produced cheaply enough to compete with alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar, coal and traditional fission nuclear reactors. The lack of availability of tritium, which is often used as a fuel source, is an issue. A common form of fusion reactor combines tritium and deuterium to produce helium. Deuterium is not hard to obtain, as it can be produced from seawater, but tritium is extremely rare on earth and decays quickly. This could mean fusion reactors need help with obtaining the necessary inputs they need to operate, which could also make them uneconomical.

There are also risks associated with fusion. Although the risk of an out-of-control meltdown scenario, like what can occur with fission reactors, is a non-issue, fusion reactors still produce significant amounts of radiation that could leak in a crisis situation. Additionally, if unmonitored, fusion reactors can generate fissile materials like plutonium-239, which must be prevented from being produced and falling into the wrong hands.

There are just as many reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, the U.S. government is broadly supportive of fusion. The Biden administration and agencies like the Department of Energy are pumping millions into the technology, and plans are forming to build a fusion pilot plant in the United States. Private-sector investment is also high.

Additionally, fusion reactors rely on a variety of different methods. Some, like the Lawrence Livermore Lab, use lasers, while another common approach uses magnets to guide a super-hot plasma around a donut-shaped chamber called a tokamak. We don’t know what the best approach is. Fusion is ripe for experimentation, and the best thing we can do is encourage as much of it as possible.

One of the sadder legacies of the anti-nuclear movement in the United States is that it sidelined nuclear power for a generation. Now, with all the problems associated with global warming, it’s obvious that this was a huge missed opportunity. We should continue to invest in wind and solar and other sources of green energy, but these won’t revolutionize our economy the way fusion could.

Truly radical innovation will have to come from an energy source like fusion. The breakthrough in California pushed us one step closer to an energy revolution. The real question now is not whether a revolution is possible but whether we have the will to turn the energy future of our dreams into reality.

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President Biden got it right in his 2022 State of the Union Address when he said “capitalism without competition is exploitation.” Competition is the keystone of the American economic model and its success. Unfortunately, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering a proposed rule on electricity transmission that not only fails to support the expansion of competition but also backs away from existing rules designed to usher in a new era of transmission competition to lower electricity costs for consumers.

According to a study by Princeton University, the United States will need to spend $2.1 trillion on transmission by 2050 if it is to reach net-zero emissions in that time. Competitively bid transmission projects have been shown to offer savings as great as 40 percent, which means requiring transmission projects to be competitively bid could save ratepayers $480 billion. Either way, consumer electric bills will substantially increase, but competition can reduce those cost increases and electricity price inflation.

The president, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission are squarely supporting competition, as outlined in a joint comment submitted to FERC backing transmission competition. In a statement, the director of the FTC Office of Policy Planning, Elizabeth Wilkins, said, “Competition is still the best way to ensure that our electric grid is built out in a way that lowers rates, increases innovation, and improves sustainability and resiliency.” Despite this, FERC is proposing an anti-competition policy — putting it add odds with the rest of the executive branch.

The problem is that incumbent monopoly electric utilities are opposed to competition and cheered when the proposed rule to scale back competition was released. Electric utilities make money by tacking on a 10 percent to 12 percent return to their equity investments — and continue to receive returns on their transmission investments for up to 40 years. These monopolies fear competition, as evidenced by the voluminous comments they have filed to prevent transmission competition.

Under the Obama administration in 2011, FERC issued Order 1000, designed to usher in a new era of competition by eliminating a federal right of first refusal for incumbent utilities. However, in a giveaway to incumbent utility companies, state-level right of first refusal laws have limited the number of competitively bid projects to only 3 percent of all transmission projects nationwide.

From 2014 to 2021, the transmission portion of consumer electric bills has increased a staggering 79 percent while the energy and distribution cost components have remained relatively low. The explanation is simple: by blocking competition, incumbent utilities have been able to steadily increase consumer prices without the fear of losing business.

All Americans have been hit hard by record Consumer Price Index inflation, but more than half of that growth has come from energy price increases. Electricity price inflation came in at 15.5 percent on an annualized basis in the latest CPI report, outpacing the inflation rate.

While higher gasoline prices tend to get all the attention, in 2021, the typical American consumer spent  $179 per month on gasoline and $176.67 on heating, comprising electricity, natural gas and fuel oil and accounts for about 3 percent of household expenditures. A Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey reveals that 33 percent of 44 million renter households across the country were behind on their energy bills in the past year.

Electricity transmission competition is a proven anti-inflation policy that works every time. New Jersey offers an example of how transmission competition fits into the picture of fighting electricity price inflation and connecting renewable energy projects with the grid. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities recently concluded their largest competitively bid transmission project, with savings ranging from 50 percent to 66 percent — or between $2.3 billion and $4.6 billion.

Congress and the Biden administration have made fighting inflation a priority while also working to lower the price of energy. Both policies can be accomplished by embracing electricity transmission competition. FERC should stand up for consumers and lead the fight for transmission competition instead of blocking it.

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