Tag: ARC-ES

Making Energy Security Federal Law Insulates Local Officials from Political Pressure

Politicizing America’s energy resources by subsidizing “alternatives” and crafting laws that prioritize wind and solar over hydrocarbons leads to more expensive and less reliable electricity generation.

A man in a suit passionately speaking at a podium in an urban setting, with the text 'No gas and oil' superimposed.

From Watts Up With That?

By Gary Abernathy

This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission. 

Politicizing America’s energy resources by subsidizing “alternatives” and crafting laws that prioritize wind and solar over hydrocarbons leads to more expensive and less reliable electricity generation.

When governments choose winners and losers, proven and efficient methods and industries take a back seat. Productivity falls off. Innovation and risk-taking are disincentivized. Competition is discouraged. Consumer choices are reduced. At the same time, quality suffers, tax dollars are wasted and investor confidence in markets and institutions is shaken.

The real-world financial realities of government decision-making based on far-left political agendas are becoming increasingly evident, with whole communities paying the consequences. Case in point: Oakland, California.

As the New York Times recently reported, “A decade ago, when environmental protesters banded together and convinced (Oakland) to renege on a contract allowing coal shipments from an Oakland terminal, it set off a chain of events that undermined a Kentucky coal company and left the city potentially liable for hundreds of millions of dollars. Since then, judges have ruled multiple times against Oakland, which is already plagued by serious financial problems.”

The article explained that in 2013 “the city gave permission to a local developer, Phil Tagami, to build a $250 million shipping terminal on that land. He then signed a lease with a company that planned to ship as many as 12 million tons of coal per year, according to court documents. It was set to become the largest coal export facility on the West Coast, opening up Asian markets as demand dipped domestically.”

But when news of the deal broke, activists lobbied Oakland City Council to prohibit coal from entering the city, arguing that even though the coal wasn’t slated to be burned there, “toxic dust” could pollute the air. Additionally, “environmentalists were adamantly opposed to Oakland contributing to the use of more fossil fuels,” supposedly worsening climate change.

Caving to pressure, city council unanimously passed an ordinance in 2016 banning large imports of coal. Tagami, the developer who had made the coal deal, sued twice and won each time. But that wasn’t the end of Oakland’s problems.

This past October, a bankruptcy judge ruled that the city’s actions unjustly harmed the Kentucky company supplying the coal, forcing it into bankruptcy. The judge suggested hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. One legal expert told the Times that if forced to pay, the city’s options included raising taxes or issuing bonds, and added, “The specter of bankruptcy for Oakland is not off the table.”

True to form, some environmentalists interviewed by the Times still defended the decision to oppose the coal shipments despite the financial implications to the city and its residents.

While Oakland’s dispute involves coal, it’s not hard to imagine similar battles involving other hydrocarbons like natural gas, or other effective energy sources like nuclear. It’s frightening to contemplate the fact that the controversy in Oakland wasn’t even about an energy source being used there, but intended to be shipped overseas.

Will activists rise up next to stop the shipment of gas or other hydrocarbons from one country to another? No need to wonder – they’re already doing so in ports around the world.

To prevent local officials from caving to the politically driven energy constraints demanded by far-left activists, federal legislation must be passed defining America’s energy position and protecting our most affordable and effective resources, both for domestic use and for exporting. The Affordable, Reliable Clean Energy Security Act (ARC-ES) currently pending in Congress would guarantee America’s energy security and codify into law the United States’ commitment to cost-effective and dependable energy resources.

When our nation declared its independence, Thomas Jefferson, with input from others, crafted one of the most famous statements of principle in human history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Generating accessible and affordable electricity – essential for modern-day life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – depends on our most accessible and affordable resources. To insulate state and local officials from radical-left pressure that would endanger Americans’ rights to energy security, Congress must pass ARC-ES.

More and more people around the world are recognizing that access to affordable and reliable electricity is not just an essential part of daily life, but a God-given right. The Washington Post recently reported that Iranian demonstrators, protesting government mismanagement and corruption, chanted, “Water, electricity, life is our inherent right.”

If the citizens of an oppressive regime such as Iran’s can insist on such rights, should Americans be any less bold?

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

When Energy Is Done Right, a Rising Tide Will Lift All Boats

When it comes to energy, the main concern for working class Americans and families in general is affordability.

A tranquil scene of various boats floating in calm waters during sunset, with a gradient of orange and pink hues in the sky and outlines of distant hills in the background.

From Watts Up With That?

By Gary Abernathy

This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission. 

When it comes to energy, the main concern for working class Americans and families in general is affordability.

For large tech corporations – and specifically, the huge data centers necessary to fuel the emerging artificial intelligence boom – the focus is on access to abundant and reliable energy.

Are those divergent concerns inherently incompatible?

In fact, what at first might seem like competing objectives should, thanks to free markets, dovetail into a confluence beneficial to all, as an all-of-the-above approach to energy resources coupled with a modernized electric grid boosts overall output while simultaneously lowering costs.

Bolstering such a prospect would be congressional passage of the Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act (ARC-ES) recently introduced by Ohio Congressman Troy Balderson (R), which guarantees that our most affordable and reliable energy sources remain crucial components of the overall energy picture.

Right now, U.S. electricity reliability is hampered by the fact that from coast to coast our nation is served by a patchwork network comprised of three major grids.

As described by EBSCO, a leading provider of research databases, “[T]he grid’s infrastructure has a number of problems. One major problem is the age of the infrastructure. The energy grid was pieced together over the course of a century, and all the parts were introduced at various times. Many of these parts are getting older and becoming less reliable.”

Another drawback is that “the U.S. energy grid has no real way of storing power for use in the future. All the power that people use at a particular time must be created at the moment it is needed.”

Yet another challenge is the fact that the grids were originally built to convert traditional energy sources like coal and gas. “Renewables” such as wind and solar are not easily integrated into the existing grid, in part because of the relatively remote areas in which they have been built.

“Today’s transmission system simply is not designed to ingest all that remote power,” as explained by the Energy Department’s national laboratory for energy systems. “Bursts of power on an especially sunny day in the desert could cause grid faults – little blips that can propagate and cause outages – or overload power lines.”

Pressure from the Biden administration to set artificial deadlines to transition from traditional energy sources to renewables was a recipe for disaster, as our outdated grid system was simply not equipped to handle such a rapid conversion. Had those unrealistic objectives been maintained, the result would have been disastrous on two fronts – falling far short of meeting the energy demands of evolving technology while leading to greater price hikes for average households.

The Energy Department’s Grid Modernization Initiative is working with partners to create the “grid of the future [that] will deliver resilient, reliable, flexible, secure, sustainable, and affordable electricity.”

As an Energy Department analysis shows, a modernized, integrated grid can better meet the demands of emerging technology by making the grid “smarter and more resilient through the use of cutting-edge technologies, equipment, and controls that communicate and work together to deliver electricity more reliably and efficiently can greatly reduce the frequency and duration of power outages, reduce storm impacts, and restore service faster when outages occur.”

For average consumers, a modernized grid allows them to “better manage their own energy consumption and costs because they have easier access to their own data.” The grid of the future will also feature meters and sensors adjusting to power ebbs and flows, voltage regulation reducing waste, and lower operational expenses for utilities, resulting in lower costs for typical households.

Environmentally, a modernized grid more efficiently integrating an array of energy resources for cleaner outputs is a much more realistic way to reduce emissions and protect our environment than “net zero” objectives or “carbon credit” schemes that can never realistically be achieved.

It will be crucial that modernization initiatives utilize the all-of-the-above approach represented by ARC-ES to keep reliable and affordable energy at the forefront of electricity generation while allowing time to upgrade the grids and eventually accommodate the cautious integration of renewables as part of the energy mix. Why? Because reliability is a national security imperative.

A key component of the ARC-ES philosophy is a requirement that energy resources must guarantee that electricity is dispatchable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Reliable sources such as natural gas must be available “to complement and provide backup to renewable energy sources during periods of low availability.” Also crucial is “the capability to ramp up or down electricity generation within one hour, stabilizing the electrical grid.”

The “all-of-the-above” approach of ARC-ES creates a tide that lifts all boats, providing electricity that is both reliable and affordable – not defective and wasteful because the government is picking and choosing winners and losers.

A modernized grid following the principles of ARC-ES that utilizes all of our crucial energy resources – including renewables when their integration is reasonable and affordable – will provide the volume and reliability sought by businesses, and the affordability crucial for average household budgets.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.