Monday, March 16, 2015

Our own government is a threat to our power grid

“The Institute for Energy Research released a new study titled Assessing Emerging Policy Threats to the U.S. Power Grid as a continuation of the Story of Electricity initiative. The report finds that the greatest threats to our power grid are not physical or cyber attacks, but rather existing and upcoming Federal and State policies including subsidies, mandates, and regulations.”

From the executive summary: “Reliable, affordable electricity is critical to our well-being and essential to modern life. But today, threats to the reliability of the power grid are  numerous: cyber-attacks, weather, and accidents. Fortunately, the most significant threat is also the most avoidable—bad policy. Federal and state policies are already increasing electricity bills around the country, and the worst effects are yet to come. The federal government, and particularly the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is
promulgating regulations that will reduce the reliability of the power grid with little thought of the consequences. In fact, these policies threaten to take offline 130 gigawatts of reliable electricity generation sources—enough to meet the electricity needs of more than 105 million Americans, or one-third of the population of the entire United States. Reforming policies that threaten grid reliability should be a top priority for policymakers.”

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Threats-to-U.S.-Power-Grid.compressed.pdf

Excellent bibliography, most sources are hot linked.

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