Quote from WebWeaver on May 5, 2023, 1:58 pm

In response to the discussion of this article, which needs a sign-in to The New York Times to read and discusses the segmentation of our national electric grid and the length of the permitting process, here are my thoughts:

Texas is an outlier in its isolation (of course, it is also huge), and its utilities lagged behind proper insulation, which led to the winter catastrophe.

 

Yes, we need interconnection, no question; the regional grids are already fairly large, with a few outliers.  Even more, we need increased local generation, avoiding the loss during transmission, especially over long distances.  We have a couple of regions with monopoly energy (Northwest, which has a lot of hydropower, and Southeast).  New York has its own ISO (independent system operator), and of course Texas.  Other states are in multistate regions, I believe 5 of them?  maybe 4?

 

I understand the long time, but even with that, NEPA misses a lot because of how scoping is defined, often leaving out important considerations.  Who gets to say what projects have national importance?  It’s complicated.

 

FERC is basically a rubber stamp for industry.  Richard Glick ackowledged the importance of taking climate chaos into account—so he was replaced after a single year as chairperson.  Rather than giving FERC more authority, we need a FREC—Federal Renewable Energy Commission—to support renewables over “King CONG”—coal, oil, nuclear, gas.