A potentially deadly winter storm is bearing down on most of the U.S., followed by days of bitter, if not record cold. This sort of extreme weather is a good example of why President Donald Trump’s effort to make coal great again matters.
More deaths occur during cold temperatures than during hot temperatures. Warmth is essential for survival in extreme cold. Electricity is generally needed to do that, even if your home is heated by oil or gas. Utilities, therefore, must keep the electricity flowing.
Five years ago on Valentine’s Day, wind turbines in Texas literally froze during a severe winter storm. Despite the foreseeability of the weather and the wind turbine failure, back-up gas plants had not been prepared to make up for the loss in electricity generation. Hundreds of Texans died as a result of the grid failure. The grid itself came within moments of being severely damaged, which would have been absolutely catastrophic.
But even if the gas plants had been prepared to back-up the wind turbines, there might still have been problems as explained in this week’s New York Times report, “Storm Poses Big Threats to Power Grids Across U.S.”
“[University of Texas researcher Joshua Rhodes] remains concerned about the system for transporting natural gas from production sites in West Texas and elsewhere to the power plants that burn the gas to generate electricity,” the Times reports.
“Much like household pipes, natural gas pipelines and other equipment that is not properly insulated can freeze, interrupting the supply of fuel to power plants. Up to two-thirds of natural gas processing plants in the Permian Basin, which lies in Texas and New Mexico, experienced an outage during the winter storm five years ago, the University of Texas report found. ‘When it happens to the big guys, that’s when there’s a noticeable loss of gas going to the power plants and people’s houses,’ said Suzie Boyd, whose company, Caballo Loco Midstream, operates networks of small natural gas pipelines in West Texas and New Mexico.”
Lots of things can go mechanically wrong with all the moving parts needed for the transmission of natural gas in extreme cold. Contrast that with a coal plant that is well-stocked with a pile of coal already at the plant.
Even when the natural gas is flowing into a power plant, it only comes in at a steady rate of about 22 miles per hour or so. That’s great for normal operating conditions, but a limitation when demand skyrockets. With a pile of coal on site, in contrast, a coal plant operator can easily access more coal to burn as needed.
There is a final advantage to coal – cost. During extreme weather, natural gas prices can skyrocket, whereas coal prices remain more stable as coal plants generally have acquired the coal before the event.
But we no longer have the same safety cushion provided by coal as we used to. The regulatory actions of the Obama and Biden administrations reduced U.S. coal power by more than 50%. State green energy mandates and the subsidies available through the Green New Scam have resulted in utilities abandoning coal for wind, solar and natural gas. All that lost coal power had taken more than 30 years to construct.
Trump is trying to do what President Jimmy Carter started – building up U.S. coal power to build up energy independence, grid reliability and electricity affordability. But in addition to the usual “green” suspects trying to stop him, so is the oil and gas industry, for an obvious and transparently hypocritical reason.
The Big Oil-run American Petroleum Institute supports getting rid of the EPA endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions for cars and trucks – which it fuels – while keeping it in place for power plants. That would increase the amount of Big Oil’s natural gas flowing to power plants but continue the dangerous reduction in coal power.
Let’s all hope and pray that our rickety electricity grid holds up in the coming extreme weather. But let’s get moving on restoring coal power so we can reduce the need for hoping and praying.
Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on @ at @JunkScience.
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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