After President Donald Trump promised to bring back “beautiful” coal power plants, a group of his appointees ruled against the idea Monday on the grounds that subsidies that would favor struggling plants would interfere in energy markets.
Trump appointed four of the five officials that sit on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who
rejected the plan Secretary of Energy Rick Perry submitted in September, arguing it would discriminate against producers of other sources of energy.
It has “not been shown that the remedy in the Proposed Rule would not be unduly discriminatory or preferential,” said the panel in an order rejecting Perry’s proposal, noting it could impact the price of electricity and would require power producers to “have a 90-day fuel supply on-site.”
Perry’s fuel supply condition “would appear to permit only certain resources to be eligible for the rate, thereby excluding other resources” that would contribute to a resilient power grid, the order said.
“Resource turnover is a natural consequence of markets, and the reduced prices that result from greater competition are a benefit to customers, not a problem to solve, unless reliability is compromised,” wrote Cheryl LaFleur, the only holdover from the Obama administration on the panel, in the decision. The panel regulates energy markets.
Since 2009, the cost of solar power generation has dropped 85 percent, making it competitive with the price of natural gas, according to a report by the asset management firm Lazard.
Trump's former 2016 campaign chief Corey Lewandowski
accused the appointees on the commission of being members of "the deep state" on Twitter Tuesday, arguing they are just "more government officials who don’t support the Trump agenda"—
even though the president was the one who appointed them.
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Originally Posted by Zippyjuan
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