THIS ISN’T A SIDE-EFFECT OF GREEN POLICY, IT’S THE GOAL: WSJ: Your Coming Summer of Blackouts.

Texas last summer narrowly averted a power outage by leaning on businesses to curtail operations. The state has since added enough solar to power about 200,000 homes. But demand has grown by even more, and the sun doesn’t shine at night. NERC forecasts a 19% probability of a grid emergency at 8 p.m. Do Texans feel lucky?

One new variable this summer is the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently finalized Good Neighbor Plan, which requires fossil-fuel power plants in 22 states to reduce NOx emissions. NERC predicts power plants will comply by limiting hours of operation but warns they may need regulatory waivers in the event of a power crunch.

The EPA claimed the rule wouldn’t jeopardize grid reliability, but then why would power plants need waivers to prevent blackouts? The Fifth Circuit of Court of Appeals this month stayed the rule in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. But it continues to be a wild card in determining whether the lights stay on in the Midwest and West.

Another growing concern is glitchy solar plant inverters, which convert DC to AC power. These have caused solar plants in California and Texas to experience concurrent outages when there has been a problem somewhere else on the grid. Solar plants have “exhibited systemic performance issues,” NERC recently warned. . . .

One state that hasn’t learned from California’s green-energy folly is New York. A new state regulation will force 627 megawatts of gas and oil “peaker” plants—which can rapidly ramp up to provide power in a pinch—to shut down this year. That’s enough to power 470,000 homes. This year’s state budget requires the New York Power Authority to retire all peaker plants by 2030. New York plans to compensate by building more offshore wind farms, but they face permitting challenges and don’t provide reliable power.

The NERC report is an alarm about the Biden Administration and states moving full-speed ahead on the green-energy transition. Maybe when the power does go out, they will stop hitting snooze.

Again, this isn’t a surprise to them. They just don’t care.