NERC assesses impact of Clean Power Plan on renewable energy, reliability services

A recent evaluation by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has forecasted the impact of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) on the mix of generation resources in the U.S., showing accelerated growth in renewable energy generation, while also raising the issue of future reliability challenges.

NERC predicts significant increases to solar and wind generation over the next 15 years, alongside a decline or slow in coal and natural gas generation. While the low natural gas prices that have fostered increased natural gas-fired generation in recent years are projected to increase, resulting in an anticipated reduction of natural gas generation in the near future, coal prices are expected to flatten, and without the CPP in place, the NERC calculated that the U.S. would see a resurgence in coal-fired generation.

“NERC’s assessment shows that significant changes to the resource mix are occurring regardless of the CPP, but that the CPP accelerates some of these changes, underscoring a potential reliability challenge,” Thomas Coleman, director of Reliability Assessment at NERC, said. “Generation and transmission planners are encouraged to use this report and its findings to develop more localized studies for both generation and transmission adequacy.”

An additional effect of the CPP is the deceleration of the growth of the nation’s annual electricity demand growth. Incentives for efficiency and demand-side load reduction have slowed the annual growth rate from 0.61 percent annually to just 0.31 percent annually.