Trump’s Alaska energy plans won’t fix mounting East Coast crisis: Commentary

SAN FRANCISCO — While the Trump energy team tromps through Alaska bragging about plans to ravage environmental lands with renewed drilling and pipelines, a real energy crisis is developing on the East Coast.

Three times in the past two weeks the Department of Energy has intervened in regional power markets: Twice to keep coal plants open in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and once in Puerto Rico to bring new fossil-fuel generators online.

The orders are designed to bulk up electric grids this summer as heat bites and energy demand soars. Grid officials have reportedly been told that green energy supplies are not as reliable as just keeping the plants running. That will jack up electricity costs for millions, as local customers in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey will soon discover.

That we face an electricity shortage this summer as temperatures rise is no lie. Stifling heat, combined with the ravenous race for more power to drive AI data centers (especially on the East Coast), threatens rolling blackouts in some areas depending on the weather.

But the idea — and cost — of keeping coal plants operating instead of speeding up the permitting of green energy to the grids is a dramatic step back in the energy transition. It harkens back to the Texas power crisis four winters ago, when red state politicians wrongly blamed green energy sources for the power failure instead of their fractured and outdated grid.

Now it is manifesting itself in orders — which some fear will be extended indefinitely — to keep open or reopen more coal plants. That will play out in coming weeks if we see more plants forced to stay open past their scheduled closing times.

One of the things that energy advocates had hoped the new administration might help with is clearing the backlog of new energy projects trying to link up to the nation’s three major grids. After all, killing red tape and onerous regulations is part of the Conservative modus operandi.

Simply dragging out the usage of harmful and unprofitable fossil fuel plants will only push the next crisis down the road and increase the threat of a real energy crunch when the time comes. It is the anthesis of the energy security we hear about over and over from this administration.

Monstrous Situation

What makes the situation even more monstrous is that while the administration is withholding progress on green energy, it is touting projects like the liquid natural gas (LNG) one this week in Alaska. The Glenfarne Group behind it says it has lined up as much as $115 billion in “strategic partner interest” for the project to deliver gas to Asia, but that is a far cry from actual investment. Even as the administration talks up the idea, which has been floating around for more than a decade, a final go-forward decision won’t be made for up to a year.

Meanwhile, the government is cutting existing projects now to finance its “big, beautiful” tax bill.

The question is whether the maneuvers are a political strategy to crush renewable energy and reinstate a fossil fuel regime — which is a cynical example of short-term thinking — or a warning that we might be closer to a dangerous energy shortage than we think. That could be an energy “all hands” that requires any and all sources of electricity to pitch in to keep the lights on, which is worse.

The ignoring of electric grid requests for more green energy likely illustrates that the latter is not the case, and that this is indeed just a continued political pattern of attack on anything that sniffs of Joe Biden’s climate strategies.

Energy officials can only carry this facade on for so long, the political equivalent of keeping their finger in the dike. Consumers, business owners, and shareholders will only put up with this for so long as well. Perhaps until the first real energy crisis.