Rich Heidorn Jr. and Michael Brooks reported that President Trump directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry Friday to force grid operators to provide a lifeline to struggling coal and nuclear plants, saying their retirements threaten national security. [The ideal is to phase out coal, but support nuclear power plants, not to protect both] The U.S. Department of Energy had not issued an order as of Friday afternoon. But a 40-page draft memo described as an “addendum” includes a reference to the order and describes the department’s legal foundation, saying the closures threaten military bases and the nation’s nuclear workforce. The memo was first reported by Bloomberg, which said it was prepared for a Friday meeting of the National Security Council.
The memo said DOE would be directing RTOs and ISOs “to purchase or arrange the purchase of electric energy or electric generation capacity from a designated list of Subject Generation Facilities (SGFs) sufficient to forestall any further actions toward retirement, decommissioning or deactivation” for 24 months — the time it said the department and its and National Laboratories will need to identify “Critical Defense Facilities” served by “Defense Critical Electric Infrastructure (DCEI).”
“To identity DCEI facilities, additional analysis will be required to gain a more detailed understanding of location-specific security vulnerabilities in our energy delivery systems, including the interdependencies associated with electric generation and transmission, and natural gas and petroleum pipelines, as well as their supply chains,” the memo said. “In the meantime, DOE’s order provides a temporary stop-gap measure to prevent the further permanent loss of the fuel-secure electric generation capacity for the grid upon which our national security depends.”
DOE said it also is directing SGFs outside RTO/ISO territories “to continue generation and delivery of electric energy according to their existing or recent contractual arrangements with load-serving entities.” The draft did not identify the generators that would benefit from the order (more).
The president’s long-awaited and highly controversial action was announced by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “Unfortunately, impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix and impacting the resilience of our power grid,” Sanders said in a statement. “President Trump has directed Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to prepare immediate steps to stop the loss of these resources and looks forward to his recommendations.”
It is the administration’s second bid for a coal and nuclear bailout. In January, FERC rejected Perry’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to subsidize coal and nuclear plants with onsite fuel. The commission instead initiated a rulemaking on grid resilience (AD18-7). (See Don’t Rush on Resilience, Commenters Urge.
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