“Their ‘all of the above’ debate wasn’t all of the above…. It was a propaganda stage for a ‘clean energy’ pact between EEI and NRDC for announcing their joint indoctrination campaign aimed at increasing market share of electricity at the expense of natural gas.”
“What this ‘powerful’ cabal intends to do is to monopolize energy by electricity under the guise of environmental necessity.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), the national trade association representing state public service commissioners who regulate investor-owned utilities, was recently the site of a political war against natural gas. [1] On the last day of NARUC’s annual Winter Policy Summit (February 14), E&E News reported (Nation’s regulators get down to business at winter meeting): [2]
…The final NARUC session on Wednesday will feature a debate of sorts between Phil Moeller, executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, and Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy.
“We have an politicized “all the above” electricity policy to the detriment of natural gas direct use. If energy diversity for electrical generation is desirable, then alternatives to electricity be also be desirable. This is especially true when considering diversity of energy delivery mechanisms (pipelines and wires) and the fact that customer outages are predominantly due to downed wires, not generation outages.”
Last month, US Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry held a hearing before the House Energy & Commerce Committee. None examined the very important issue of over-electrification.where public policies discriminate against direct-use natural gas.
The concept of an “all-the-above energy policy” was a recurring theme of Secretary Perry’s hearing with the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Thursday October 12 [1] This is a popular fiction; like another of Secretary Perry’s reoccurring themes that energy is not a free market.…
[Editor note: Mark Krebs has been a leading advocate (see here) for free-market decision-making between natural gas and electricity in homes and places of business, challenging the ‘deep decarbonization’ push of energy interventionists to disciminate against fossil fuels at point of use. This is the first of a two-part post.]
“Grid reliability should not eclipse energy reliability; especially during weather emergencies. Yet, much of the discussion looks like more of the same rent-seeking by interests looking for rebuilding damaged electricity infrastructure with inherently unreliable wind and solar generation based ‘microgrids’.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is undertaking an in-depth review of the laws and regulations affecting electric energy. Much of that review is through a series of hearing that started last July. The objectives for this series of hearings were officially stated as follows:
…Today, the nation’s electricity industry is undergoing a period of transformation due to technological innovation and market competition, creating tremendous benefits to American consumers.