The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants could hurt grid reliability, with the potential for “significant power shortages,” according to major U.S. grid operators.
“The joint [independent system operators/regional transmission organizations] are concerned that the proposed rule could result in material, adverse impacts to the reliability of the power grid,” four of the largest U.S. grid operators said in joint comments to the agency Tuesday.
Their reliability concerns mainly stem from the chance that the EPA is overestimating how quickly technological advances may occur in “green” hydrogen production, transport and generation, as well as in carbon capture and storage, or CCS — the key compliance pathways for meeting the proposed rule…
I’ve seen this movie before. The stakeholders go on records as saying they’ll have trouble meeting these targets, and then easily meet the targets years early.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) hasn’t been done anywhere on the scale that will be needed to really make a difference. I am also skeptical of the quality control on that kind of scale when it comes to CCS. Corners might be cut to save money, so the CO2 gets injected into shallow holes with the wrong kind of geology needed for long term storage. Is there any sort of federal regulatory agency in charge in that area? I’m thinking something similar to the NRC for nuclear related technologies.