America is in the process of unwinding an economic suicide pact drawn up by Barack Obama, which wedded the Land of the Free to sunshine and breezes, at the expense of reliable and affordable power.
Rick Perry Says Obama Policies ‘Threatened The Reliability’ Of The Electric Grid
Daily Caller
Michael Bastasch
27 June 2017
Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to make the U.S. electrical grid great again starts with rolling back the Obama administration’s “politically-driven policies” that forced coal and nuclear power plants to retire in recent years.
“These politically-driven policies, driven primarily by a hostility to coal, threatened the reliability and the stability of the greatest electrical grid in the world,” Perry said at an Energy Department conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday morning.
“It’s not reasonable to rely exclusively on fossil fuels,” he said. “It’s not feasible to rely exclusively on renewables.”
Perry’s remarks came as his agency is preparing to release a study on grid reliability that environmentalists and green energy backers fear will pan variable power sources, like wind turbines and solar panels.
The wind industry was so worried about Perry’s grid reliability review, they put together a lobbying and media strategy to push back against it — before it had been released.
As part of that plan, wind lobbyists released a report in June touting the benefits of a “diverse” electric grid. That study has only ruffled feathers at the Energy Department where it’s been seen as an attack on the agency’s credibility.
Perry has yet to signal any hostility towards wind power. In fact, wind power boomed while he was governor of Texas.
Perry laid out an “all of the above” plan for “energy dominance” that doesn’t tilt the scale in favor of one type of energy, like the Obama administration did for green energy. Perry aims to ensure “renewables get to the electrical grid,” but also make sure nuclear and coal power aren’t “tossed aside.”
Perry’s remarks shouldn’t be surprising — President Donald Trump pledged to help the coal industry on the campaign trail by rolling back Obama-era climate and mining regulations — but they do give some insight into what the Energy Department’s grid study may find.
The Energy Department’s study may validate concerns from energy experts and Republicans that green energy, like wind and solar, hurt grid reliability because of their variable nature.
The study may also find Obama-era policies made the grid less stable, but the Energy Department is unlikely to come out against green energy altogether. The study will probably find beneficial policies and uses for green energy.
The big question is what can Perry do to keep more baseload power online?
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies have contributed to coal plants closures, but so have low natural gas prices and subsidies for green energy. So far, utilities have retired or slated for retirement 100 gigawatts of coal power through 2020.
Some plants were converted to burn natural gas, but most were completely taken offline — or will be in the coming years.
Daily Caller
Rick Perry’s sop to renewables rent-seekers – “It’s not reasonable to rely exclusively on fossil fuels” – is nonsense.
It’s not reasonable to subsidise a wholly weather dependant power source, that sailors and mill owners couldn’t wait to abandon the minute James Watt perfected his whirling steam kettle in 1776.
If it were even vaguely reasonable to rely on the weather for power, there would be a market for it and absolutely no need for the billions of dollars in subsidies that built the wind industry and which, if ever removed, would see it disappear like snowflakes in summer. Anyone employing the word ‘reason’ and wind power in the same sentence has abandoned all concept of the former out of a delusional belief in the latter.
STOP THESE THINGS 
to continue on with what the post above was working on, sit down, put your feet up and take this in ….. Not heard of this before? armed with new information now you can rethink what you knew and now what you know. https://youtu.be/lG1YjDdI_c8
Spot on! Kirk Sorensen will literally ‘blow the brains’ of your average global warming ‘believer;, to say nothing of many Australian ‘experts’.
Check my thing out, http://galileomovement.com.au/media/ShouldYouReallyBeAlarmed.pdf as I’ve tried to lead people gently into the subject through a series of short videos (TED talks) initially, before getting more detailed. And yes! Kirk certainly gets a big airing – and deservedly so, given the amount of research he’s put into the subject.
The Daily Caller seems to have a weak apprehension of who is now driving US energy policy.
It is President Trump, who has made abundant, cheap energy the cornerstone of US growth. He recently announced it (see https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/06/29/stratospheric-in-consequence-president-trump-policy-speech-unleashing-american-energy/) in conjunction with Perry, plus the Secretary of the Interior (who controls leases for drilling and mining on the huge expanse of US Federal lands) and Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA. All of those departments are aligned to allow the lowest cost energy producers to prevail in the US.
President Trump has already approved the two big pipelines (Keystone and Dakota Access) which Obama had blocked for years. On his recent trip to Europe he was busily promoting US LNG. He wants the US not just to be energy independent but to be a major exporter of energy.
Perry may make a polite mention of intermittent energy generators but President Trump and his whole economic policy is about the US having the lowest cost energy in the world upon which he expects economic growth to be based. One thing President Trump has very firm, long held beliefs about is business growth in the US and what is necessary to achieve it, which is why he pulled out of the Paris Agreement and has unleashed what is in fact a revolution in US energy compared to the Obama years.
The intermittent energy scammers are now toast in the US except in a few states like California which for religious reasons will continue to damage their economies while business moves from them to states with the lowest cost energy under President Trump’s policy.
While Merkel and co may bluster about President Trump and still being committed to the Paris Agreement, their industrial leaders are telling them that competitive advantage is now tilting even more in favour of the US given its now cheap energy policies compared to those of Europe. President Trump had a strong set of meetings with the Eastern European countries and is giving them cover to get out from under the greenie policies (and policies for taking muslim “refugees”) of the EU.
Reblogged this on UPPER SONACHAN WIND FARM.
The mystery remains – why can’t politicians and bureaucrats garner the gumption to call out ‘wind power’ for what it is ie intermittent, unreliable, weather dependent and totally dependent on subsidies and baseload generators to cover up its total uselessness.
Because the PC Green Left fools pushing for it’s use will never be held responsible for the disaster they are bringing on the rest of us. When the madness totally fails these fools will walk away and say we told you so always taking the high ground.
Dare I mention MODERN nuclear energy? On this blog I believe that I can.
A major revolution in new technology is just around the corner – literally. And guess which country is going to be “the first cab of the rank”? China – surprise, surprise! And where did they get all the information they needed to get started? The Americans – hamstrung by the ‘green’ tape of the Obama era. Surprise, surprise – again!
I’ve spent some time researching this, and then sorting the information out into ‘bite-sized’ bits so that anyone can ease themselves into this subject, and then get as complicated as they wish. If you download this little thing about the weather http://galileomovement.com.au/media/ShouldYouReallyBeAlarmed.pdf, you should start perhaps at page 3 for this subject. This PDF is interactive.
Once you digest just a part of this information you will know a lot, lot more about the subject than approximately 99.99% of the population (and you might even know as much or more than a few of our Australian academic ‘experts’!).
You will find out that not only will there be cheap, clean, and reliable electricity, but this is only a side-issue! Modern nuclear will be producing other beneficial results – simultaneously, altogether, and at the same time (if you get my drift!).
And the present nuclear waste? That will be reprocessed and reused far more efficiently so that only a small quantity of low-level, short-life residual will be left.
There’s more: but you will discover this if you check out the information I’ve provided already. Want to know who is active in this already? One of the links in the PDF should guide you to this information as well.
Enjoy!
Wow. I have only glanced at a few but this is fantastic! Thanks for sharing!
Pleased you like it! Keep looking, and give me any feed-back. Heaven forfend that this material might get into the hands of our propagandised youth!
No insurance company in the world will insure a nuclear reactor and other than being very dear and taking a long time to build they are very cost inefficient. Australia has lost any vestige of a high tech engineering base or ever having a nuclear fuel industry. Only countries who self insure will ever build reactors in the future like India and China.
Who insures the 449 nuclear reactors currently operating in 30 countries around the world, and in the 15 countries currently building another 60 reactors? An insurer will take a beat on anything, including the weather.
Prior to the first war, Australia never had any vestige of an engineering base to build coal-fired plant that would handle Victoria’s brown coal until an Australian General, John Monash sent officers into Germany after the Armistice and returned with the knowledge gathered from their brown coal fired plant, he then built the La Trobe Valley plants using German engineers and German plant. If Australia had the will to build nuclear plant it could do so in a heartbeat.