Coal over wind: How Trump used emergency powers to help a favored fuel

“The way decisions are getting made are very fast paced and not sort of done in a more methodical, comprehensive, strategic approach,” said Devin Hartman, who directs energy policy at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank that has been critical of Trump’s use of emergency powers. “It’s a lot more just one off, what can we quickly do on this as soon as possible to have the most effect and less concerned with procedural considerations, or in some cases, legal questions.”

He added, “It’s just a very different way to approach policy…”

That type of thinking points to a flaw in the Trump administration’s approach, said Hartman, the R Street analyst. He said administration officials were getting “information from bad sources” about the impact of renewables on the grid. While wind and solar projects do not contribute to reliability to the same degree as natural gas or nuclear plants, the electricity they do generate is a positive for the electric system, he said.

Hartman said he was sympathetic to the administration’s concerns about maintaining grid reliability, but not its use of emergency authority to achieve its goals. It’s a response to the Biden administration’s effort to favor renewables while curtailing fossil fuel production, he said.

“That put the political right in the position to counteract those things, unfortunately, more by picking their own winners and losers to contradict the left,” Hartman said. “We kind of need this adult conversation, actually, about the fuel wars and saying: ‘This is not benefiting anybody, you guys. This is not going to help affordability, reliability or the environment to just constantly have the seesaw of picking winners and losers.’”