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COAL UNDER MORE PRESSURE: Coal interests warn that Democrats’ plan to boost renewable energy incentives would speed up coal’s already-guaranteed exit and make grids less reliable at a time of heightened risk for blackouts.

Utilities and grid operators across the country have overseen thousands of megawatts worth of coal retirements over the last decade, replacing that generating capacity largely with variable wind and solar, and less emissions-intensive natural gas.

Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of coal trade group America’s Power, said the Manchin-Schumer deal would accelerate coal closures and further undermine grid reliability, where utilities are already struggling to maintain a comfortable cushion between peak electricity demand and reserve capacity.

“Impartial officials and regulators responsible for grid reliability have issued warnings about potential reliability problems, citing the closure of coal plants as a main reason,” Bloodworth said yesterday in a statement.

Utilities have already announced plans to shutter more than 40% of their coal plants within eight years “even without extending tax credits,” she said, adding that such a level of retirements equals the combined electricity supplies of Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The changing grid: The electric grid is undergoing a “major transformation,” as John Moura, director of reliability at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, noted in a recent press call, and it has been for a while.

Coal capacity consistently accounts for the largest share of capacity retirements each year, as utilities seek to shelve old plants and meet climate change goals. The changing grid dynamics have played a big part in the reduction of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, as coal is the most emissions-intensive generating source.

The phasing out of coal, and the expansion of renewables, has been achieved on the back of existing production and investment tax credits for wind and solar power generation.

The new deal between Sen. Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is a far cry from the clean electricity standard contemplated in earlier versions of the spending bill, but it would still keep fueling coal retirements by extending further the tax incentives to utilities and project developers to make wind and solar generation, which are already extremely cheap, even cheaper.

For Bloodworth, wind and solar “have a role to play as part of an all-the-above energy strategy,” but she insisted they are less dependable than coal-fired generation.

Coal and reliability: Moura and others at NERC have charted out the growing pains associated with large-scale retirements and the struggles utilities are having to incorporate variable renewable sources into the grid while still ensuring reliability.

Separately, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which oversees grid operations across 15 states and Manitoba and faces the most dire reliability situation this summer of any operator in the country, said in January that the retirements of “always-on” generating units such as coal-fired plants are partly responsible for the reliability shortcomings.

America’s Power and other coal interests have seized on these reliability issues to promote the efficacy of coal and warn against retiring units at rates like MISO has overseen: some 18,300 megawatts since 2015.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman) and Breanne Deppisch (@breanne_dep). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.

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EUROPEAN DIESEL IMPORTS JUMP IN JULY: Europe increased its imports of Russian diesel by more than one fifth in July, underscoring the challenges the EU faces as it seeks to reduce its dependency on Russian fossil fuels.

In total, the group imported nearly 700,000 barrels a day of diesel from Russia last month, according to data from tanker tracking group Vortexa, and a 22% increase compared to the same point last year.

Europe relies on Russia for roughly 15% of its total diesel imports, and some analysts say the July numbers underscore the difficulty the bloc will have in reducing that amount to zero by February, as leaders previously vowed to do.

“We’re very far from Europe replacing Russian diesel,” David Wech, chief economist at Vortexa, told the Financial Times. “I wonder whether Europeans will manage to fully carry through on the announced diesel import ban.”

SPAIN ORDERS TEMPERATURE LIMITS FOR BUSINESSES: Spain's government passed a decree this week ordering all businesses to limit their air conditioning use and told shops to turn their lights off at night, a step meant to reduce natural gas consumption ahead of the winter season.

The order gives businesses seven days to adopt the new plan. It is slated to be in place until late 2023, with exceptions for extreme weather events.

Spain’s Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera said the measures were adopted to show Madrid’s “unity and solidarity” with the rest of the EU. "[This is] a special effort at an extraordinary time," she added.

The cuts will help Spain reduce its gas consumption by 7%—in line with the cuts Spain agreed to make last week as part of the EU’s broader gas reduction plan. That plan calls on countries to cut gas consumption by 15%; a voluntary target that would become binding for member nations in case of an emergency.

Spain, which relies on Russia for less than one-quarter of its natural gas imports, had initially objected to the EU proposal—arguing that a blanket 15% level would be unfair given each countries’ individual energy mix and their country’s individual, highly-varied reliances on Russian energy supplies.

GEORGIA EXTENDS GAS TAX SUSPENSION: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp extended the state’s gas tax holiday through September 2023, extending the law just days before it was slated to expire on August 13.

“I have extended the temporary suspension of the state’s motor fuel tax to alleviate the financial burden placed on Georgians due to the federal government’s gross mishandling of inflation,” Kemp wrote on Twitter this morning.

Kemp first passed the gas tax suspension bill into law in March, in an effort to shield drivers in the state from soaring-high fuel costs. This is the second time Kemp has since extended the law.

Gas prices in Georgia stood at a statewide average of $3.72 today, according to AAA, down from $4.32 a month ago and roughly 44 cents below the national average of $4.16.

U.S. HIGH-TIDE FLOODING BREAKS RECORDS IN MULTIPLE LOCATIONS: The amount of High Tide Flooding (HTF) broke or tied records in three U.S. locations over the past year, according to new data released by NOAA yesterday.

On the Atlantic coast, Reedy Point, Delaware, broke its previous record with 6 HTF events, and Springmaid Pier, South Carolina, near Myrtle Beach, tied its 2021 record with 11 high tide flooding events, NOAA said. In the Pacific, Kwajalein Island observed 4 high tide flooding days, also one more event compared to the previous meteorological year.

Though HTF increases are expected to decline as a whole this year, NOAA predicts increases in certain regions, including the Eastern U.S. and along the Gulf of Mexico. Those communities will “continue to experience an over 150% increase in HTF compared to the year 2000,” NOAA said. Read the full report here.

OPEC+ PLEDGES TO RAISE OUTPUT BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY: OPEC+ moved forward today with a marginal oil production increase of 100,000 barrels per day for the month of September, pulling the rate down from the roughly 648,000 bpd increase it agreed to for July and August.

The lower rate is a slight to President Joe Biden, who recently visited leading OPEC member Saudi Arabia in part to negotiate more oil production, and other leaders who’ve been urging the cartel to raise production to help tame prices.

The Biden White House had set expectations that something would come from the trip. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said en route to Saudi Arabia last month that the administration hoped to see “additional actions by OPEC+ in the coming weeks,” beyond the higher production rates to which it agreed for July and August.

MORE LNG TO ASIA IS GOOD FOR CLIMATE: PAPER: Asian economies should shirk natural gas imports from Russia in favor of relatively cleaner liquefied natural gas imports from the United States, a new paper from the Progressive Policy Institute argues.

The authors maintain that the global imperative to displace coal with gas and the rising energy demands in Asia provide an “in” for U.S. LNG to be a reliable and more climate-friendly energy source for the developing region.

Citing estimates that Russian gas has a larger greenhouse gas emissions footprint than Chinese coal itself, the authors conclude that “any pretense by China that using Russian gas reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions is false.”

Because of the high fugitive emissions associated with Russian gas, any climate change-related justification for expanding pipeline imports to China and the broader region is undermine and “will only subvert Asian and global climate protection goals.”

It’s an increasingly common argument and one that co-author Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser at PPI who worked in the Clinton administration, has been making to encourage more shipments of U.S. LNG to Europe as a means of displacing demand for Russian gas.

OLIVER STONE ANNOUNCES NEW PRO-NUCLEAR DOCUMENTARY: Famed filmmaker Oliver Stone tweeted this morning that his latest documentary, Nuclear, will premiere on September 9th. It’s “an argument in favor of nuclear energy as the realistic solution to the gulf we now face in the production of clean energy for our continuing existence here on the planet Earth.”

Stone said that, contrary to popular depictions, nuclear power is not dangerous.

“Renewables like wind and solar work to a limited degree, but by now, we should know they don't come close to fixing the problem alone -- which is why the fossil fuel companies support renewables. Because they inevitably require large amounts of methane gas to ensure their reliability,” he added.

The Rundown

Washington Post Celebrities use private jets excessively. It’s a climate nightmare.

E&E News California’s megadrought is worse than you think

Bloomberg Bitcoin miner made millions in credits by shutting rigs during Texas heat

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Calendar

THURSDAY | AUGUST 4

10:00 a.m. 538 Dirksen The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the economic costs of climate change.