Biden Plans Make Energy Infrastructure an “Ever Bigger” Problem

June 30, 2021

This week, The Washington Post published an article “The grid’s big looming problem: Getting power to where it’s needed” that exposes one of the central paradoxes in President Biden’s agenda. As the Administration seeks to cut off American sources of fuel like oil and gas, it is simultaneously pushing to electrify more products in the name of its “green” agenda. But as more things get plugged into the electrical grid, there need to be more reliable fuel sources and more infrastructure to deliver electricity to homes and businesses.

As the article mentions:

The nation’s already strained power grid is either at a turning point or poised to dash all those clean-power visions as it crumbles under the new stresses being placed on it.

“The grid has never been as important as it is now, and in a year it will be more important,” said Dennis Kuhn, senior manager for integrated field construction design for Avangrid, which operates renewable generation plants in 22 states and utilities in New York and New England.

Blackouts in Texas and California, with prices skittering dizzily up and down, are evidence that the system needs attention. On June 21, 100,000 customers in Michigan lost power after thunderstorms swept the state. And now the Northwest is trying to fend off the heat.

The nation’s electricity grid is bursting at the seams, and our nation’s energy policies are being dictated by politicians who don’t actually understand or value energy. Instead, they push environmental proposals masked as energy policies that actually make things worse. 

The United States has abundant sources of oil and gas that could help alleviate the growth in energy demands. Yet, as The Washington Post reports, the Administration is looking elsewhere:

The Biden administration is counting on solar and wind generators to replace fossil-fuel-burning power plants. But they require a considerable amount of real estate, and the right weather, and as a result they’re typically located far from the cities they would serve. This is why the congestion of transmission lines that stems from inadequate capacity to meet demand is looming as an ever bigger problem.

In an ideal world, public policies would be instituted to alleviate problems. But these so-called energy policies like the ‘Green New Deal’ just serve to make our problems “ever bigger.”