The White House is considering an Energy Department proposal to buy electricity from unidentified U.S. coal and nuclear power plants to prevent their "premature" retirement. The justification: heightened threats of cyberattacks and natural disasters.
The National Security Council is meeting today to discuss coal and nuclear retirements and possibly a plan, for creating a "strategic electric generation reserve," a federal intervention in energy markets that would rival the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve created by Congress in 1973 after the oil shocks of the 1970s.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that President Trump has directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to prepare "immediate steps" to halt the loss of "fuel-secure power facilities," and the president is looking forward to his recommendations. The initial DOE proposal to support coal and nuclear was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Critics from across the energy sector immediately blasted the plan as a threat to existing power markets.
"Not even the president can unilaterally rewrite the Federal Power Act so anything that seeks to override [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's] role and tariffs on how plants are dispatched and paid would be challenged on that basis, among others," said John Shelk, president and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents independent power generators.
And Congress might have a role to play, he said, noting that lawmakers established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Contradictions and holes
While experts agree that cyberthreats against critical energy infrastructure assets are increasing, the proposal does not explain how shoring up particular money-losing coal or nuclear plants would address these risks ... cybersecurity challenges are not limited to the natural gas industry, as the memo acknowledges. "Natural gas, petroleum, and coal are all, to varying degrees, dependent upon supply chain interfaces that are each exposed to cyber and physical threat," it says... industrial cybersecurity experts have typically shied away from making sweeping claims about the security of one energy mode or another.
Whether coal, nuclear, renewable or gas, "all of them could be equally susceptible to cyber issues," noted Marty Edwards, managing director of the Automation Federation and former chief of the Department of Homeland Security's control system security division. "It would be highly installation dependent."
'There is no emergency'
While news of the memo thrilled coal boosters, electricity experts and grid operators were left baffled. critics questioned the cost, legality and necessity of such a move.
A coalition of almost a dozen energy groups from across a broad spectrum — oil and gas, wind and solar, and energy storage — issued a joint statement blasting the proposal as unprecedented and misguided "crony capitalism" when no emergency exists. The groups, including the America Petroleum Institute, American Council on Renewable Energy, American Wind Energy Association, Natural Gas Supply Association and Solar Energy Industries Association, said processes are already in place to safeguard the grid.
"The Administration's plan to federalize the electric power system is an exercise in crony capitalism taken solely for the benefit of a bankrupt power plant owner and its coal supplier," said Malcolm Woolf, the Advanced Energy Economy's senior vice president of policy.
"There is no emergency on the grid of the kind of nature that has been used before in these situations," he said.
A spokesperson for the PJM Interconnection, the largest grid operator in the country, said they have not received any official DOE document.
"Our analysis of the recently announced planned deactivations of certain nuclear plants has determined that there is no immediate threat to system reliability," the spokesperson said. "Markets have helped to establish a reliable grid with historically low prices."
