President Joe Biden has set an ambitious goal for slashing the U.S. economy’s greenhouse gas pollution. But getting there can feel like a giant, consequential game of whack-a-mole. Phase out coal-fired power plants, and you face questions about whether wind and solar power can stand up to extreme weather. Deploy millions of electric vehicles, and you have to confront the pollution, forced labor and other thorny issues created by mining for battery minerals. This is becoming a familiar dance for the nation’s grid operators, which must prepare for an influx of low-carbon power, growing energy demand for electric vehicle charging, and increasingly severe blizzards, heat waves and storms, writes POLITICO’s E&E News reporter Peter Behr. Days of extreme heat with nary a breeze can limit wind power right as electricity demand for air conditioning goes through the roof. On the flip side, blizzards and other storms dim the sun’s rays (and cause natural gas shortages) just as people need more heat for their homes. Electric utilities across the country are trying to get out in front of this challenge. In New England, for example, the region’s grid operator is investigating how each type of power will fare as climate change drives more extreme weather. Meanwhile, coal is hanging on One major (and tenacious) obstacle to cleaning up the grid: coal’s surprising staying power. Despite a shifting power market and tougher environmental regulations in the last 15 years, coal provided a fifth of the nation’s electricity generation last year, lagging behind gas and renewables. That’s down a lot from 2007, when coal accounted for half of U.S. electrical generation. But as POLITICO’s E&E News reporter Jean Chemnick notes, “most projections ... see coal occupying a sliver of the market through the 2030s and beyond.” And that, as she writes, “is not consistent with Biden’s emissions goals.” Over the next few months, the administration is expected to launch a regulatory blitz against coal plant pollution, taking aim at everything from carbon to coal ash. That could trigger a string of new coal retirements as utilities eye the cost of keeping the fuel on their books. It’s unclear if that will be enough to meet the pledge that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry declared at climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021: “By 2030 in the United States, we won’t have coal.”
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