"It’s anti-renewables" is becoming a familiar refrain voiced before public utility commissions, air quality management districts, and other public agencies with jurisdiction over the siting and operation of new fossil-fueled electric generation projects. The survival — and, in some cases, expansion — of legislatively mandated renewable energy requirements, tax incentives, and outright subsidies through the recent economic downturn has further encouraged opponents of new fossil-fueled generation to cloak themselves in the environmental flag, irrespective of their underlying motives and goals.
The combination of legislative mandates, ambivalent regulators, and an emboldened opposition is making the already daunting challenges of developing new fossil-fueled generation projects seem insurmountable. Although increasing renewable generation is the right and necessary long-term energy policy, abandoning new fossil-fueled generation both harms renewable development and, in the near term, puts reliability at risk.
New Fossil-Fueled Generation Is Needed
Whether intended or not, renewables are increasingly being perceived as the "only game in town" for developers of new generation projects. States are appropriately implementing measures designed to streamline the permitting and approval process for new renewable generation projects. In contrast, developers of fossil-fueled projects must navigate an increasingly complicated regulatory maze that can readily cause substantial delays, increase costs, and put project viability at risk.
Against this backdrop, transmission grid operators must integrate new intermittent renewable resources without compromising system and local reliability. New fossil-fueled generation resources with improved efficiency, emission profiles, ramping times, and shaping capabilities should be critical tools in this effort.
In California, the independent system operator has expressed the belief that all existing fossil-fueled generation is needed to support the addition of the new renewables resources necessary to meet the state’s climate change objectives. However, given the age, relative inefficiencies, operating constraints, and environmental concerns associated with the state’s existing generation fleet, keeping the current fleet afloat solely as a means to ensure reliability is counterproductive from environmental and other standpoints. One obvious solution is to facilitate the development of new, highly efficient and lower-emitting fossil-fueled units to replace older units, some of which date back to the decades following World War II.
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