Enlarge / Solar panels, Ferrisburgh, Vermont, June 15, 2016. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images)
On Friday evening, Bloomberg reported that it has seen an early draft of a study from the Department of Energy (DOE) concluding that renewable energy like wind and solar are not a threat to the reliability of the grid at present. The study was commissioned at the request of Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
If this draft is an accurate reflection of what would be in the final study, the results would be surprising. Perry sent his staffers a memo back in April which never mentioned renewable energy by name but called out “certain policies” that have contributed to the “erosion of critical baseload resources,” like coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric power. The tone of the memo, which accused Obama-administration policies of destroying jobs and “[undercutting] the performance of the grid well into the future,” seemed to make the results of the baseload study a fait accompli, which would allow the DOE to set policies to support the coal industry.
Bloomberg says that the July-dated draft contradicts insinuations that renewable energy is the cause of coal plant closures. Instead, the draft blames the low price of natural gas for a market that has been giving less love to coal over the past few years. “Costly environmental regulations and subsidized renewable generation have exacerbated baseload power plant retirements,” Bloomberg quotes from the draft. “However, those factors played minor roles compared to the long-standing drop in electricity demand relative to previous expectation and years of low electric prices driven by high natural gas availability.”
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