EIA Echoes NERC, FERC in Warning of Short Gas Supplies This Winter
Yesterday, MDN brought you the news that the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) is sounding the alarm that more than half of the U.S. and parts of Canada, home to around 180 million people, could fall short of electricity during extreme cold again this winter (see NERC: Half of U.S. Faces Elec Blackouts This Winter – Lack of NatGas). FERC is also chiming in with a warning about potential blackouts. Why? Lack of natural gas pipelines to help feed gas-fired power plants.
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In January 2016, Invenergy announced its intention to build a natural gas-powered electric plant in rural Elizabeth Township, in Allegheny County, PA (see 
In May, the Bidenistas at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a hellscape of new regulations called the Clean Power Plan 2.0, aimed at forcing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to close (see 
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) is sounding the alarm that more than half of the U.S. and parts of Canada, home to around 180 million people, could fall short of electricity during extreme cold again this winter. Why? If you read certain leftwing publications, they will say we’re heading for blackouts due to an overreliance on natural gas. According to NERC and its just-released 2023–2024 Winter Reliability Assessment, the coming outages are because we don’t rely ENOUGH on natural gas! That’s right. NERC (and FERC) say we need more pipelines and natural gas to shore up a lack of supplies during the worst cold snaps. The lack of natural gas leads to a lack of fuel for electric power plants (and for people who use it to heat their homes). Both agencies, but NERC in particular, say we need more pipelines, and we need them NOW.
Last December, PPL Corporation subsidiaries Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities Company (KU) announced a plan to replace 1,500 megawatts of aging coal-fired generation (nearly one-third of Kentucky’s coal fleet!) with two 621-megawatt (MW) natural gas combined-cycle units along with several unreliable, intermittent solar projects (see 
Last week, on Halloween Day, officials from the PJM Interconnection presented a plan to make up for the retirement of fossil fuel generators and increasing demand on the way over the next five years. The plan includes 72 proposals from FirstEnergy, Dominion, and other companies designed to meet future power needs — for a total price tag of roughly $5 billion. Here is a startling admission from PJM made as part of its announcement: There will be a 7,500 megawatt (MW) increase in demand from now until 2028 due to data center additions to the system in Virginia and Maryland. At the same time, more than 11,000 MW of fossil fuel generation across the PJM footprint of 13 states and Washington, D.C., have or are being retired. Add the two together, and you get a delta of 18,500 MW that we need to cover somehow. Yikes!
The next few weeks will tell the story of whether or not the final nail has been driven into the coffin of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax in Pennsylvania. Yesterday, we brought you the really big news that PA’s Commonwealth Court voted 4-1 to block the state from joining RGGI (see 
In the end, Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court was not fooled by the Democrat left’s attempt to rename a tax as a fee to circumvent the necessary approval needed by the state legislature in approving taxes as provided for by the state constitution. We’re referring to the illegal attempt by former PA Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019 to force the state into a carbon tax scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which would slap a new (very high) tax (i.e., “fee”) on electricity produced by coal- and gas-fired power plants, forcing them out of business in favor of unreliable “renewable” energy sources (see 
The mental gymnastics leftists go through to justify their anti-freedom, anti-capitalist views is truly a marvel to behold. Take the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at shutting down coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf could not get the Republican legislature to agree to enroll the state in RGGI, so he seized dictatorial powers and tried to do it himself. Which hasn’t worked out (Republicans sued to block it, still tied up in court). Joseph Otis Minott, President of the Clean Air Action Fund (far-left Big Green group in Philadelphia), is trying to justify RGGI with a new argument: It reduces racism (otherwise called “environmental justice”).
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the U.S. Two years ago, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
The United States will add 8.6 gigawatts (GW) of natural gas-fired electric generating capacity in 2023, more than the gas-fired additions in 2022 and 2021, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday. So far, in 2023, 10 natural gas-fired power plants have come online with 6.8 GW of new capacity. Another six plants are due to come online by the end of this year, adding another 1.8 GW of new capacity. The EIA expects 20 new natural gas-fired power plants to come online in the next two years, in 2024 and 2025, with another 7.7 GW of new capacity.
We remember (years ago) hearing Rush Limbaugh postulate this observation about liberals: “Liberalism is spreading misery equally.” Instead of cutting taxes, which boosts economic prosperity for everyone, including those at the bottom of the economic ladder, liberals seek to make more people pay more taxes. Spread the misery. Instead of allowing people to choose their form of energy, force them to use only certain (very expensive) forms, or force them to cut back on the energy they use (Jimmy Carter’s “throw a sweater on in the winter” comment in the late 1970s). Spread the misery. We now see this truism playing out with liberal Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro concerning the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — a clever name for an obscene carbon tax.