Chambana Sun

The Federalist reports that renewable energies could be unreliable because of droughts and smoke from wildfires.

“No kidding,” Rep. Brad Halbrook (R-Champaign) wrote on Facebook. “We told you so.” 

In his Facebook post, Halbrook shared a link to a May 24 piece from The Federalist, which focused on a report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. That report, an annual summer assessment from June through September, predicted demand for power will bring blackouts through the entire Western U.S., the midwest, Texas and the western south.

The University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute wrote the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said the blackouts in Texas were caused by the state’s electric grid failing. 

“We’ve had years of poor planning of peak [demand] by ERCOT,” said Alison Silverstein, an expert on Texas’ electricity system who formerly worked at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Public Utility Commission of Texas. The Texas Tribune reported she spoke during a public event hosted by the environmental group the Sierra Club in 2021. “ERCOT’s power market has historically been managed to minimize costs, not to assure excellent reliability.”

In February 2022, the Solar Energy Industries Association reported that five months after Illinois legislators passed and Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed “landmark clean energy legislation,” they found that “2022 is on track to be one of the biggest years for solar energy in Illinois’ history. The renewable energy industry plans to complete more than 8,400 additional solar installations and increase its workforce by nearly 50% in 2022.”

In October 2021, The Chicago Tribune reported that Illinois had fallen short of previous targets for renewable energy.

Under the last major overhaul of state energy policy, signed into law five years ago by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner (R), Illinois was supposed to get 25% of its energy from renewable sources by 2025.

That deadline, which is no longer in effect under the new law, is still three years away, but it is widely acknowledged that the state was not on track to meet it and has been behind the curve since the start.

According to Statista Our World In Data reported that coal is the least safe source of energy, claiming 100,000 deaths per thousand terawatt hour mostly from the effects of air pollution.