The US is not far behind Britain in this respect. We may even be ahead.
The EPA is forcing the power industry to close many old coal fired electric plants.
These old plants were used for extra power during peak demand periods. But these old plants are small and inefficient compared to modern plants and so it is not cost effective to retrofit them with pollution controls to meet new pollution regulations.
So the US is just a heat wave away from rolling black outs. The EPA uses fear mongering about air pollution killing people all based on unsubstantiated statistical analysis. Well there is nothing theoretical about heat waves killing people with out air conditioning. Some one stuck in their home during a blackout with out the AC may die.
Also scarcity of a commodity makes the price go up. The unavailability of these older plants means they are not available to generate power when needed for their owners. This means their owners must buy replacement power at market rates when the rates are highest. This means power may be priced out of the ability of some consumers to pay. That means some people will not run their AC when they need it and some of those people will die.
Bump! to Post #13.
It is over 33,000 MW of plant closures.
Some of the plants being closed run into several hundred megawatts per unit being shut down.
Some are natural gas fired, rather than coal.
Sorry, but these plants could not have been used only during peak demand periods. Boiled water plants, all external combustion plants are boiled water, take a minimum of three days for the smallest plants to five to seven days for the largest to get linked up to the grid and producing power. This start-up delay is why coal is almost solely used for base load generation. Peaking for peak demand is generally supplied by gas turbines and hydro, due to their rapid start-up (under 24 hours) and quick response.
It's true that electric power use peaks in the summer because of A/C, but the winter load is increasing. A major cold wave like we had in the DC area in early 1994 will cause a large number of heat exchangers to switch to resistive heating and the increased demand could cause blackouts with catastrophic results. In my apartment building in 1994 there were dozens of units that froze and then flooded simply because the heaters could not keep up.