Exclusive — Dave Walsh: Electrical Grid Operators Are ‘Sounding Alarm’ over EPA Rules

In a Thursday, Aug.ust 14, 2003, file photo, cars try to navigate their way through New Yo
Frank Franklin II, File/AP

Electrical grid operators have been “sounding alarm bells” that they will not be able to “meet the demand” of the amount of electricity needed under the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) most recent regulations, Dave Walsh, former President and CEO of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas, Inc. (MHPSA) said during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday.

The EPA released four final rules Thursday that would help to reduce the amount of pollution being produced from “fossil fuel-fired power plants.”

The EPA’s final regulations for coal-fired and natural gas-fired power plants “limit the amount of carbon pollution covered sources can emit.”

“We’ve got the regional grid coordinators across the grids, PJM 13 states, MISO 15 states, CAISO, which is California, ERCOT, which is Texas, and now added North Carolina and Tennessee, 32 states now impacted by grid operators telling us that they’re running out of electricity,” Walsh said, adding that we are not “generating enough baseload constant duty electricity to support demand.”

States such as California are already faced with importing electricity and typically import roughly “between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply,” according to the U.S. Energy and Information Administration.

“California imports 34 percent of its electricity to begin with before now running into southern California problems,” Walsh said.

“What we’ve had is a mix of energy sources, as nuclear plants were shut down en masse, and now coal plants being shut down en masse with these latest decrees of the EPA. Basically, having the impact of closing the rest of them by 2039,” Walsh added. “A massive shortage of what’s called baseload constant duty electricity power plants. These are plants that run all day long, generally 365 days a year, very high capacity factor, 92, 95 percent, being displaced with stuff that operates, if solar, national average five hours a day, up in the north about four hours a day it’s operational. Wind, on land, is about an eight-hour-a-day phenomenon, but again, radically modifies day to day.”

Walsh added that there is about a “75 percent variation in daily wind volume or speed for power generation.”

“You’ve got a great shortfall there, great shortfall with solar displacing assets that run all of the time. So you wind up with a systematic reduction of energy being produced by the electrical system,” Walsh continued. “We’ve got grid operators around the country now sounding alarm bells that in the next few years, they’re not [going to be] able to meet demand with the amount of electricity being generated.”

Walsh added that as electrical grid coordinators are warning they will not be able to meet the demand for electricity due to the lesser amount of electricity being produced under the Biden administration’s latest EPA regulations, costs will rise.

“This goes right to the issue of cost. We’ve already seen, in the last three years, national electricity rates rise by about 23 percent. Where I am in Florida, up by 29 percent. If you have a shortage of anything, a growing shortage of anything, costs rise. A dramatic increase in costs. This experiment has been run in Europe and Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, California already, mass over-adoption of renewables.”

In August 2023, California was forced to rely on fossil fuels such as natural gas to provide electricity to residents during an ongoing heat wave as renewable energy sources such as solar and wind were not able to keep up with the demand, especially during peak evening hours.

Walsh warned that if solar and wind are adopted to the degree the Biden administration wants, people will “see electric costs probably two-and-a-half to three times higher within 20 years, and a massive increase [in the] amount of brownouts, blackouts, and service curtailment announcements such as we see already in ERCOT and CAISO, advancing into PJM and MISO, which is about 28 more states.”

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

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