Officials warn that states with green grids may experience blackouts due to lack of sun and wind.

Is the US Heading Towards a Catastrophic Situation?

It’s a warm summer night in Texas, and as the sun goes down, the wind eases to a calm breeze. There’s nothing extreme about the weather, but the pleasant conditions could present a big problem for the state’s green power grid.

Texas is one of many states that have seen fossil fuel plants close in favor of green power generation alternatives, such as wind and solar. But those alternatives are less reliable than their gas and coal counterparts—wind turbines need strong gusts to generate power at full capacity, and solar panels don’t work at night. As a result, state and federal officials are warning residents in Texas and elsewhere that high summer temperatures, combined with low winds at night, could bring power blackouts.

The Problem with Green Power Generation

“I’m afraid to say it, but I think the United States is heading towards a catastrophic situation,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member Mark Christie said during a May Senate hearing. “The problem is not the addition of wind and solar, it’s the subtraction of dispatchable resources like coal and gas.”

North American Electric Reliability Corporation president Jim Robb echoed Christie’s sentiment during an April press conference, calling the newfound reliance on green power generation “highly concerning” given the increased demand associated with “electrification policies and electric transportation.”

For Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, Biden’s planned transition to green power generation shows Americans are “in the era of insanity when it comes to our policies.”

The Push for Green Power Generation

President Joe Biden has thus far ignored those warnings as he pushes forward with plans to eradicate fossil fuels from U.S. power generation by 2035, a move the White House says is necessary to “tackle the climate crisis.” Should green energy power grids bring unreliable electricity and air conditioning, Biden’s green revolution would almost certainly spark widespread political backlash.

While Biden is moving forward with plans to greenify the nation’s power grids, some lawmakers are pushing back. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member James Danly, for example, has called for the agency to restrict state subsidies for green energy power generation. But federal energy law mostly leaves those decisions to the states, prompting Texas officials to float their own reforms.

The Need for Dispatchable Generation

Texas Public Utility Commission chairman Peter Lake earlier this month stressed the need for the state to “incentivize building more dispatchable generation,” a reference to power sources such as natural gas and coal that can be turned on and off at the flip of a switch.

“We’ve got lots of renewables, but at the end of the day, zero wind times infinity windmills is zero electricity,” Lake said during a May press conference. “And the sun sets every night.”

Plants that produce nearly 30 percent of America’s coal-fired power are scheduled to retire by 2029, a trend that Biden has worked to accelerate. The Democrat’s Environmental Protection Agency last week unveiled emission standards that require coal and gas plants to slash their carbon emissions a whopping 90 percent between 2035 and 2040. To meet the near-impossible benchmark, the agency is advising plants to use carbon capture technology to store their emissions underground before they hit the atmosphere.

That technology, however, is both extremely expensive and largely unproven. No power plant in the country uses it, and the technology requires plants to construct pricey pipelines to funnel emissions underground. The agency’s reliance on carbon capture suggests its rule is meant to accelerate the closure of coal and gas power plants, Heartland Institute environmental policy expert Sterling Burnett argued.

Despite the push for green power generation, state and federal officials warn that the decrease in gas and coal could bring catastrophe. It remains to be seen whether the US can transition to green power generation without sacrificing reliability and affordability.