Media & news

It seems each month I read a report, article or quote from a respected source with yet another warning of the energy shortfalls facing the United States. More often, the articles I see are from the climate “news” publications predicting our imminent doom if we do not act now to reduce carbon emissions.

When I saw the recent blackouts in Spain and Portugal, it was these climate articles that came to mind. For many years, climate change activists and advocates for “clean” energy, have pushed and protested, in the name of saving the planet, for more renewable energy. It is interesting that the same individuals who are concerned about planetary health are unbothered by the potential of a country with no reliable energy, and that they see no issue with losing the safety, security, prosperity, health and comfort that electricity provides.

Climate activists claim renewable power is the answer to the climate change challenge. But recent events confirm what has been said many times over – renewables cannot replace the dispatchable, always-on energy provided by fossil fuels. In an April 30 article in the The Wall Street Journal, titled “How the Lights Went Out in Spain,” the authors, Gabriel Calzada and Manuel Fernandez Ordonez, share their opinions on the factors that led to the blackout in Spain on April 28. “Life changed for Spaniards at noon [that day],” the article states. “With the sun at its peak, the country’s largely solar-powered electrical grid shut down. Mere days before, Spain’s government had announced that its grid had for the first time entirely run on renewable power, with new records set almost daily for solar.” The article further states that, following the blackout, Spain’s president, Pedro Sanchez, held a press conference “with havoc in the cities and trains stuck in the countryside [and] with half the country still without access to electricity” to acknowledge the event was “an unprecedented disaster.”

They also mention a fundamental truth of electric generation, that electric providers are responsible for maintaining a stable electric grid that includes reliable energy sources. “While the discrete triggering event isn’t yet known,” Mr. Calzada and Mr. Fernandez Ordonez state, “any reliable grid system must be designed with such events in mind, be they meteorological or technical. A rational system should be designed to handle such events. Spain’s system was engineered politically, and not rationally.”

Years of climate change rhetoric and misguided energy polices have led us here. Because electric providers are scrambling to build generation portfolios that can more easily comply with harsh regulation by adding renewable energy sources (often government subsidized) and taking away dispatchable sources, much of the United States is in a situation where weather, and the normal peaks of a year, can threaten reliability. Many electric providers are also in a situation where they simply cannot accept new load growth.

To this point in time, as PowerSouth is in its 84^th year of providing wholesale power to its members, it seems the activists have gotten what they wanted. This would have been unthinkable in 1941, when PowerSouth – then Alabama Electric Cooperative – was formed. Charles R. Lowman, former CEO, once recounted not having electricity until 1937. “It was so dark in the country,” he said. “Very dark. I had to study by oil lamps at night and draw water from the well with a rope and a bucket.”

Unlike Spain’s government and President Sanchez, PowerSouth and its members still value around-the-clock power and its benefits in our lives. Energy shortages should be a rarity– the first thing you see on the news, not a commonplace occurrence. Perhaps large portions of our country are okay with blackouts because the climate activists’ voices have gotten louder and louder for years, making it seem ridiculous to think in opposition. Perhaps some just wish to return to oil lamps, well water and bedtime at sunset – so long as they can still access Facebook.

I think the people in Spain would agree with PowerSouth. It is better to have reliable power than to be left in the dark.

I hope you have a good month.