Assessing Emerging Policy Threats to the U.S. Power Grid

Reliable, affordable electricity is critical to our well-being and essential to modern life. But today, threats to the reliability of the power grid are numerous: cyber attacks, weather, and accidents. Fortunately, the most significant threat is also the most avoidable bad policy. Federal and state policies are already increasing electricity bills around the country, and the worst effects are yet to come. The federal government, and particularly the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is promulgating regulations that will reduce the reliability of the power grid with little thought of the consequences. In fact, these policies threaten to take offline 130 gigawatts of reliable electricity generation sources enough to meet the electricity needs of more than 105 million Americans, or one-third of the population of the entire United States. Reforming policies that threaten grid reliability should be a top priority for policymakers.