EPA’s Victims Looking to Prayer and Judicial Relief

Townhall.com ^ | February 23, 2022 | Gregory Wrightstone

[Kaslin]

Providing sustenance to the Biden administration’s “green” push to replace use of the U.S.’s abundant reserves of fossil fuels with unreliable and expensive wind and solar are regulators armed with a specious notion that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants.

The government’s attack on hydrocarbons goes back to the Clinton administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, which produced a legal opinion that it could regulate greenhouse gases even though Congress never empowered it to do so. Undeterred by the absence of legislative backing, the Obama administration sought to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at coal-fired power plants under the Clean Power Plan. Although Obama’s “War on Coal” abated under the Trump administration, it returned with Biden.

This back-and-forth between unelected regulators and judges makes the availability of reliable and affordable energy subject to ideological fancies and questionable science. Coal, oil and natural gas have produced and still sustain the wealthiest and healthiest society ever known. Abandoning them at this stage of technological development can only mean misery.

Nonetheless, access to energy — a necessity for any modern society — is at the mercy of court decisions and political calculations. Implementation is left to a weaponized EPA directing fire at hapless industries and their workers.

Since the days of Bill Clinton, various administrations have viewed EPA as the enforcer of anti-fossil pursuits. EPA’s effort to regulate greenhouse gases attracted organizations looking to seize the right moment to push their anti-fossil agenda. They — allied with a number of blue states — eventually wound up at the Supreme Court, which ruled in the 2007 Massachusetts vs. EPA case that the agency had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

It was under a court-empowered EPA that the Obama administration introduced its Clean Power Plan, directing states to reduce coal-plant emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Trump’s administration tried to overrule the Clean Power Plan but was dealt a blow by a 2021 D.C. Circuit Court ruling. Challenging this ruling on Feb. 28 before the Supreme Court will be some 20 states arguing that EPA needs congressional approval to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

The regulatory and judicial maneuvering seemingly overlooks fundamentals of energy: Based on currently available technologies, only coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear — and to a certain extent hydro — can provide energy at affordable costs on demand. Over-reliance on wind and solar have led to high prices and energy shortages in such diverse places as California, Texas and Europe. Power grids elsewhere are flirting with similar disasters.

Also disregarded by too many in the administrative state is the havoc that an unfettered EPA can wreak on people far from the halls of federal power. Last year in Pennsylvania, a proposal that seeks to kill the coal and gas industries was advanced by a regulator saying his deciding vote was based — at least partially — on the EPA’s designation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Coal plants employing tens of thousands in that state have closed or have announced plans to shut down under the threat of the proposed regulation.

In a Pennsylvania county that is home to two of the plants to be shuttered are yard signs asking for prayers. Perhaps they will be answered with a judicial ruling to impose congressional restraint on federal regulation. We can hope — and pray.

[Mogger]

All the hype over solar electricity is nuts.

Grid tied solar is INSANE.

Dumping power into the grid mostly in off peak times.

We've been heating our hot water with solar for over 30 years.

That has saved us a huge amount of money and energy.

Payback was in a couple of months as I did it myself with zero money stolen from my fellow taxpayers at gunpoint.

I do have solar electric panels with Victron MPPT controllers for portable use and backup, again, done myself with zero theft from other taxpayers.

If everybody that has a situation where they can, would just heat their hot water and as much of their house or business as they can with hot water this would save Far more than the electric panels.

Storing the solar energy in the media of concrete and/or water is relatively cheap, low tech, and doesn't require exotic materials.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Over-reliance on wind and solar have led to high prices and energy shortages in such diverse places as California, Texas and Europe.

It won't be just high prices and shortages. Large electrical systems need the huge rotating mass of big generators for grid stability as well as power you can immediately dispatch in case of system disruptions. You don't get that from wind and solar. The grid will become increasingly unstable and prone to widespread outages.

America’s Power Grid Is Increasingly Unreliable

...our transmission and distribution infrastructure is very old and utilities have fallen over $200 billion behind in maintenance and modernization. 70% of transmission and distribution lines are well into the second half of their expected 50-year lifespans.

Large, sustained outages have occurred with increasing frequency in the U.S. over the past two decades, according to a Wall Street Journal review of federal data. In 2000, there were fewer than two dozen major disruptions, the data shows. In 2020, the number surpassed 180.

All of this is caused by climate hysteria which has the same psychology as COVID hysteria. All of the attendant systems disasters were caused by politicians and academics ramping up the fear and hysteria. The same playbook is used for energy and COVID.

[ConservativeMind]

We had a solar water-only heating system years ago. It worked pretty well.

[Tell It Right]

I have grid-tied solar, although I don't put power onto the grid.

As far as whether putting power onto the grid would be during off peak times, I guess that depends on where you live. The times I have excess solar power with nowhere to go (because my home is getting all the power it needs from the solar panels, plus my batteries are fully charged) tend to be during the afternoon. Here in the south it's during the day that most power is consumed because of our heavy dependence on A/C -- at least most of the year -- particularly the hot part of the year with the most sun anyway. The more so in the afternoon when families are more liable to be coming home and want their homes cooled and start running appliances for chores, which is during the time of day my batteries are most liable to be fully charged and I'd put power onto the grid if I was doing that. So if I was putting power onto the grid, during most of the year I'd be doing it when the grid users needed it the most, at the time of the year it's needed most (hot period of year), not during off peak hours. Maybe that's not the case in other parts of the country.

I'm 100% with you on getting rid of subsidies and such. Yes, I claimed a tax credit for installing solar, but I believe all the tax credit did was cause my costs to increase accordingly anyway. Thus, had there been no tax credit I would have spent just as much out of pocket and still waiting until the right time for solar technology to improve enough to be worth it --- the tax credit didn't help my budget nor motivate me to buy into solar sooner.

And I'm 100% with you on the independent nature of how it works for you. I can't stand the Dims pushing "green" energy in situations it obviously doesn't work. The main reason I went solar is to give myself some protection from the effects of the Dims' one-size-fits-no-one approach. I figured if I spent MY money doing solar on MY house to provide for MY power it'd be a lot more efficient because I'd be motivated to make sure my money wasn't wasted.

And it's worked like a charm. In my first year it's produced about half of all the power I consumed -- and that's with having ported over my natural gas appliances to electric (thus I consume more power than I used to, but buy less power than I used to because solar provides a huge chunk of it). No more natural gas bill, and my power bills are lower than they used to be even back when I was paying both a power bill and a gas bill. Thus, I worry a lot less than I used to about the Dims making energy costs go up. I also worry less about the Dims making electricity less reliable (though so far in Alabama the Dims have yet to make our power as unreliable as third world countries like California). When the weather predicts a storm coming in the next day or two (particularly during tornado season), I set my inverter to pull whatever power I need from the grid unless the batteries are fully charged (thus solar power is directed first to charging the batteries in case I need them for emergency use).