Staff Reports
The latest analysis from two so-called “Energy Bad Boys” has thrown a wrench into the gleaming promises of green energy that the Biden administration has been peddling. Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling have wielded their analytical prowess to reveal a glaring issue: what good is “green energy” if it’s not reliable or affordable? The answer is increasingly clear: it’s about as useful as a chocolate teapot, particularly given that their research found the EPA’s assumptions to be shockingly unrealistic and downright irresponsible.
The Biden administration’s approach to energy policy has landed firmly in the “let’s build it and hope it works” camp. In their rush to electrify America, the administration has seemed less concerned with how these policies will affect consumers and more focused on hitting lofty environmental goals. Whether it’s charging stations for electric vehicles that nobody wants or offshore wind farms that threaten marine life, the administration’s plans have often resembled a toddler’s crayon drawings — ambitious but lacking in actual detail.
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— Gene Melius (@melius_gene) August 26, 2024
As the mental gymnastics continue, Orr and Rolling’s recent analysis for the Industrial Commission of North Dakota shines a bright light on the EPA’s new power plant rule, which mandates carbon capture technologies nobody is asking for. The duo estimated that the cost and impact of this rule could be catastrophic for reliable energy supply. With the prospect of removing reliable power sources from the grid while burdening new generation with steep costs, one must wonder if the green energy advocates are trying to play energy Jenga with the country’s power needs.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s a distinct lack of reliability assessment accompanying the EPA’s regulatory impact analysis. Instead, it looks like they conducted a magic trick using resource adequacy assessments that fail to take into account the actual reliability scenarios of today’s energy grid. Spoiler alert: the magic of green energy does not conjure up the dependable electricity that America relies on. Meanwhile, the legal challenges to this overreaching rule continue to wind their way through the courts, with hopes resting on the Supreme Court to inject some sanity back into federal energy regulations.
But the issues don’t end there. Rolling and Orr’s analysis of the Biden administration’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards has uncovered that consumers across the Midwest and Great Plains might soon be left in the dark—specifically losing around 4 gigawatts of coal-fired power, enough to keep 130,000 homes illuminated for a month. It’s almost as if the administration is playing a game of energy roulette, but this time the stakes are much higher than just losing a few dollars.
Finally, the duo’s venture into analyzing the New Mexico Low Carbon Fuel Standard showed that gas prices could spike by up to 30 cents per gallon and diesel by a staggering 34.7 cents by 2030. This raises the question—can the green energy proponents ever truly deliver on their lofty promises without sending the average American’s wallet into a tailspin? Energy Bad Boys or not, Orr and Rolling have made it crystal clear that the assumptions fueling the green revolution are more akin to fairy tales than realistic frameworks for energy policy.
