The absurdity of moving away from reliable energy sources
Aug. 16, 2024 PLYMOUTH VOICE.
Plymouth Michigan News
OPINION
Walz’s Climate Policies Could Leave the Midwest in the Dark
By: Joshua Antonini and Jason Hayes
“State leaders need to wake up, and soon…”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz last year signed one of America’s most aggressive climate laws, mandating that 100% of the state’s electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2040. Even if he doesn’t ascend to national office, he may end up leaving not only Minnesota but other states in the dark. As we show in a new paper, politicians like Mr. Walz are destroying the electricity markets that are essential to economic success and even individual survival.
We analyzed seven Great Lakes states with connected electricity grids—Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. For decades, these states have bought and sold electricity in regional markets, benefiting from the abundance of reliable power generated from sources like coal, natural gas and nuclear. But through a combination of state mandates and utility company decisions, all of them are moving away from those reliable sources toward unreliable wind and solar power, in pursuit of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Where will states like Minnesota turn when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, two inevitable daily occurrences? Mr. Walz and net-zero backers surely assumed they could buy backup power from across the region, but other states assumed the same thing. In a classic tragedy of the commons, Mr. Walz and other leaders act as if they don’t realize their neighbors are also on track to run short of power.
Minnesota is moving to close its largest power station—the coal-fired Sherco plant—by the end of the decade. It has already shut down one of the plant’s three units, with the second going offline by 2026. The largest solar project in the Upper Midwest is supposed to replace it, but when it fails, Minnesota will have to rely on other power sources to keep the lights on.
Can it look to Wisconsin? That’s getting harder. The Badger State has its own net-zero mandate and is rapidly decommissioning power plants, while its largest utility plans to phase out coal power within a decade. Likewise Illinois, where a net-zero requirement has already contributed to power-supply issues, with multiple plant closings under way.
In 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order committing the state to net-zero emissions by 2050. The state Legislature subsequently expanded the mandate, requiring electricity providers to use 100% “clean energy” sources by 2040. Utilities are already closing coal plants, have closed nuclear ones, and are dramatically ramping up wind and solar.
Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania don’t have state mandates, but utilities have committed to net-zero or carbon-free emissions and shuttered coal- and petroleum-fired plants in 2023 and 2024. One Ohio generating station was the largest plant to close in America last year. Each closing leaves states with less electricity to share.
When subzero temperatures sweep across the Great Lakes every January, states will increasingly ask each other for power that doesn’t exist. Ditto when heat waves crest in July and August. Factories will lose power—a death knell for competitiveness—while families will lose air conditioning or heat. In Michigan, we estimate that a wind-, solar- and battery-based grid will cause blackouts lasting as long as three days during extreme winter weather. People will die.
This shouldn’t be surprising to Mr. Walz and his peers. Many of the grid operators responsible for balancing electricity between states have warned about what’s coming. The CEO of Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator, which oversees most of the Great Lakes region’s electric grid (including Minnesota), recently noted that the energy transition poses “material, adverse challenges to electric reliability,” and that wind and solar power “lack certain key reliability attributes that are needed to keep the grid reliable every hour of the year.” In other words, replacing traditional generation with wind and solar means an electricity grid that routinely fails.
State leaders need to wake up, and soon. While there’s no chance Mr. Walz will abandon his signature climate policy during a national campaign, no state should endanger its economy and residents by pursuing net zero.
Mr. Antonini is a research analyst and Mr. Hayes director of energy and environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. This Op-Ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal Aug. 9, 2024.
Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a nonprofit research and educational institute in Midland, Michigan. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the PLYMOUTH VOICE.
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