This is part two of Robert Bryce’s testimony to the House Select Committee on The Climate Crisis.

Our electric grid is fragile.  Robert Bryce writes that the Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergence Response illustrates the declining reliability of our grid.  Bryce says:

“In 2002, there were 23 “major disturbances and unusual occurrences” on the domestic electric grid. Those outages were caused by things like ice storms, fires, vandalism, and severe weather. By 2016, the number of disturbances and unusual occurrences had increased six-fold to 141. In 2020, the number of events jumped to 383 – an increase of 270% in just four years.  Even more alarming: through the first two months of 2021, there have been 122 of these outages.”

Bryce says:

“Electrifying everything is the opposite of anti-fragile.  Attempting to halt the use of liquid motor fuels and replace them with electricity will make our transportation system more vulnerable to disruptions caused by extreme weather, saboteurs, equipment failure, accidents, or human error. Electrifying our transportation system will reduce societal resilience because it will put all our energy eggs in one basket. Electrifying transportation will reduce fuel diversity and concentrate our energy risks on a single grid, the electric grid, which will make it an even-more-appealing target for terrorists or bad actors.

Furthermore, and perhaps most important, attempting to electrify transportation makes little sense given the ongoing fragilization of our electric grid. The closures of our nuclear plants is reducing the reliability and resilience of the electric grid and making it more reliant on gasfired power plants and weather-dependent renewables.”

While skeptics have known for years that the alarmist’s forecasts of doom are not likely to be realized, the alarmists oddly want to shut down all nuke plants. Nuke plants that do not emit their enemy carbon dioxide (CO2).  Bryce notes Congress inaction regarding this issue when he says:

“Instead, Congress is standing idly by as our nuclear plants – our most reliable, safest, and most power-dense form of electricity production – are being shuttered. Nuclear plants are, as writer Emmet Penney recently put it, our “industrial cathedrals.” If policymakers want to decarbonize our transportation system while enhancing the resilience of our society, the best option would be to have a grid that is heavily reliant on nuclear energy.”

Bryce discusses recent issues that demonstrate the gird’s declining reliability in his report.  They can be reviewed by clicking here.

See part two about supply chains and mineral needs.