Host: Bryan Lee, Host, The Energy Markets Podcast
Guest: Todd Snitchler, President and CEO, Electric Power Supply Association
The Environmental Protection Agency’s new proposed rules to significantly crack down on carbon emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, as published, promises to aggravate growing power grid reliability concerns, EPSA president and CEO Todd Snitchler suggests. “I think we need to be thinking a little more holistically and not siloed in the rules in order for us to make sure that we can achieve the outcomes that policymakers want us to achieve, while still ensuring system reliability. That has to be first and foremost,” Snitchler says.
More broadly on grid-reliability concerns, Snitchler rejects assertions by some that competitive markets and RTOs are particularly vulnerable to outages and reliability issues. “I know that there are a number of views about what the right model is,” he says, but he notes there are increasing reliability concerns in monopoly-regulated states as well as the clean-energy transition ratchets up. “I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all and we should just copy a different market because it allows vertically integrated utilities to carry the day because, even in that example, they’re not able to get done, I think, some of the things that maybe some advocates would say that they can” …
