GREG BLACKIE: Green New Scam Causing America’s Energy Crisis

Our country is facing an energy crisis. No, not because of new demand from data centers or AI. Instead, it’s because utilities in nearly every state, due to government imposed “renewable” mandates, self-imposed mandates, and the supercharging of the Green New Scam under the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” have been shutting down vital coal resources and building out almost exclusively intermittent and costly resources like solar, wind, and battery storage.

President Donald Trump understands this, and that is why on day one of his administration he declared an Energy Emergency. Then, a few months later, the President signed a trio of Executive Orders designed to keep our “beautiful, clean coal” burning and providing the reliable, baseload, and affordable electricity Americans have benefitted from for generations.

Those orders have been used to keep coal generation online that was slated to shut down in Michigan and will potentially keep two units operating that were scheduled to shut down in Colorado this December. In Arizona, however, the Cholla Power Plant in Navajo County was shuttered by the utility just weeks after Trump explicitly called out the plant for saving in a press conference.

Unlike states with green mandates, Arizona essentially has none. Instead, our utilities, like many around the country, have self-imposed commitments to go “Net Zero” by 2050. To meet that target, they have planned to shut down all coal generation in the state by 2032 and plan to build out almost exclusively solar, wind, and battery storage to meet an expected explosive growth in demand, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. So it is no surprise that like much of the rest of the country, Arizona is facing an energy crisis.

Taking a look at our largest regulated utilities (APS, TEP, and UNS) and the largest nonprofit utility, SRP, future plans paint an alarming picture. Combined, over the next 15 years, these utilities expect to see demand increase from 19,200 MW to 28,000 MW. For reference, 1,000 MW of electricity is enough to power roughly 250,000 homes. To meet that growth in demand, however, Arizonans will only get a net increase of 989 MW of reliable generation (coal, natural gas, and nuclear) compared to 22,543 MW (or nearly 23 times as much) of intermittent solar, wind, and battery storage.

But what about all of the new natural gas coming into the state? The vast majority of it will be eaten up just to replace existing coal resources, not to bring additional affordable energy to the grid. For example, the SRP board recently voted to approve the conversion of their Springerville coal plant to natural gas by 2030, which follows an earlier vote to convert another of their coal plants, Coronado, to natural gas by 2029. This coal conversion trap leaves ratepayers with the same amount of energy as before, eating up new natural gas capacity, without the benefit of more electricity.

So, while the Arizona utilities plan to collectively build an additional 4,538 MW of natural gas capacity over the next 15 years, at the same time they will be removing -3,549 MW (all of what is left on the grid today) of coal. And there are no plans for more nuclear capacity anytime soon. Instead, to meet their voluntary climate commitments, utilities plan to saddle ratepayers with the cost and resultant blackouts of the green new scam.

It’s no surprise then that Arizona’s largest regulated utilities, APS and TEP, are seeking double digit rate hikes next year. It’s not just Arizona. Excel customers in Colorado (with a 100% clean energy commitment) and in Minnesota (also with a 100% clean energy commitment) are facing nearly double-digit rate hikes. The day before Thanksgiving, PPL customers in Rhode Island (with a state mandate of 100% renewable by 2033) found out they may see rate hikes next year. Dominion (who has a Net Zero by 2050 commitment) wanted to raise rates for customers in Virginia by 15%. Just last month, regulators approved a 9% increase. Importantly, these rate increases are to recover costs for expenses incurred years ago, meaning they are clearly to cover the costs of the energy “transition” supercharged under the Biden administration, not from increased demand from data centers and AI.

It’s the same story around the country. Electricity rates are rising. Reliability is crumbling. We know the cause. For generations, we’ve been able to provide reliable energy at an affordable cost. The only variable that has changed has been what we are choosing to build. Then, it was reliable, dispatchable power. Now, it is intermittent sources that we know cost more, and that we know cause blackouts, all to meet absurd goals of going 100% renewable – something that no utility, state, or country has been able to achieve. And we know the result when they try.

This crisis can be avoided. Trump has laid out the plan to unleash American Energy. Now, it’s time for utilities to drop their costly green new scam commitments and go back to building reliable and affordable power that generations to come will benefit from.

Greg Blackie, Deputy Director of Policy at the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. Greg graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with a B.S. in Political Science in 2019. He served as a policy intern with the Republican caucus at the Arizona House of Representatives and covered Arizona political campaigns for America Rising during the 2020 election cycle.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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