This should be the nail in the coffin of the Biden administration’s unworkable and downright dangerous regulatory policy undermining the nation’s power supply. According to new analysis from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), more than half of the nation faces blackout risks over the next decade due to capacity shortfalls.

While these findings aren’t surprising, they’re certainly shocking. National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan said in response to the assessment, “NERC couldn’t be clearer that the grid reliability math isn’t adding up and that an increasingly dangerous situation will be untenable without a sharp change in policy.” He added, “Surging electricity demand is colliding with an unworkable regulatory agenda that is producing self-imposed scarcity, undermining affordability and reliability. There should be no confusion: the nation’s rapidly deteriorating grid reliability and surging power prices are the direct result of policy failure.”

He also encouraged the Trump administration to take action on day one. “The incoming Trump administration has an urgent opportunity to respond to the pleas of the nation’s reliability regulators, grid operators, utilities and the states to pursue a regulatory and energy policy pivot that addresses this unfolding electricity supply crisis. Fundamentally, we cannot short-change the bridge to our energy future, and that requires recognizing the ongoing critical importance of the fuel-secure, dispatchable power provided by the nation’s coal fleet,” Nolan said.

NERC found that the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, with territory covering much of the Midwest, faces a “high risk” of energy shortfalls starting as soon as this summer. New England, the Mid-Atlantic, parts of the Southeast, Texas, California and the Great Plains are all also at elevated risk and could all experience capacity shortfalls from extreme cold or hot weather.

“Well over half of North America faces a potential shortage of electricity supplies in the future,” said Mark Olson, manager of reliability assessments for NERC.

The Resource Adequacy Model is Breaking Down

NERC found that surging demand growth coupled with thermal generator retirements and the slow completion rate of renewable generation and transmission infrastructure is leaving grids across the country short of capacity when it’s needed most. NERC also pointed out “the performance of these replacement resources is more variable and weather dependent than the generators they are replacing. As a result, less overall capacity (dispatchable capacity in particular) is being added to the system than what was projected and needed to meet future demand.”

NERC also – for the first time – is warning that grid planners don’t fully have a handle on the threats to their systems. “The industry’s methods of planning for resource adequacy need to change,” the NERC report concluded.

As E&E’s Pete Behr noted, “the historic reliability calculations followed for the past 70 years assumed power plants could deliver their prescribed output. NERC analysts said that model is breaking down and must be replaced with much more sophisticated risk assessments.”

What NERC is warning against isn’t theoretical. It’s happening in real time in Europe. Grave energy policy failures that have undercut dispatchable power and placed overreliance on weather-dependent resources (at a truly enormous cost) are coming home to roost.

Attack of the Dunkelflaute

Germany’s power supply and prices are now completely dependent on the cooperation of the weather. And over the past two months, the weather has done anything but cooperate. Germany has now dealt with three dunkelflaute episodes, or dark doldrums, leaving the country perilously short of wind and solar power and completely reliant on dwindling dispatchable power supplies and electricity imports.

Last week, shortages of renewable energy – which Germany has spent more than $500 billion euros promoting – were so acute, wholesale power prices soared, reaching €1000 per megawatt hour — the highest level recorded in 18 years.

And Germany’s energy woes are wreaking havoc on its neighbors. Because Germany, Europe’s most populous nation, has become so reliant on energy imports, spiking electricity prices are crossing the border.

Norway, which is a leading supplier of both gas and electricity to Germany, has about had enough of German-induced energy price spikes. The Norwegian energy minister Terje Aasland told the Financial Times that “it’s an absolutely shit situation.” 
Germans are equally fed up. Prices are up, industrial output is collapsing and the economy has been shrinking for two straight years. The German government has dissolved, and snap elections are coming in early 2025.

Germans appear ready for some pragmatism and they may finally get it. The leading candidate for the Green Party, Robert Habeck, was asked, considering Germany’s energy woes, if the country needs to rethink the early phase-out of its coal fleet—the very fleet that met 30% of the nation’s power in November. He said, “Yes. For me, energy security always has absolute priority.”

If the German Green Party is getting the message, maybe there is hope some pragmatism makes it across the Atlantic before widespread blackouts do. As NERC has made abundantly clear, not acting is a not an option.