CLIMATE CHANGE/ENERGY/RICK PERRY: “Environmental group the Sierra Club sued the U.S. Energy Department on Monday [8-14-17] in hopes of forcing it to reveal the groups it has consulted in conducting an eagerly awaited study on the electricity grid.
It was the latest push-back on the department’s study from backers of renewable energy such as wind and solar power who fear it could be used by the Trump administration to form policies that could slow growth in the industry.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who commissioned the 60-day study in April, ordered his department to see whether ‘regulatory burdens’ by other administrations including former president Barack Obama’s had forced the premature retirements of so-called baseload power plants, fired by nuclear and coal. Perry said those policies potentially put at risk the reliability and security of the national power grid.
The Sierra Club, in the suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said the department had ignored a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in May. That request sought the release of communications between staff and outside groups it had consulted, in the belief that the Energy Department had mostly relied on fossil fuel backers…
The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It had initially said the report would be released in July, but the release has been delayed. A draft of the study, conducted by a contractor who included contributions from staff across the department, said that intermittent renewable power has not harmed the grid, was leaked to the media last month.”
-Timothy Gardner, “Sierra Club sues U.S. Energy Department over power grid study,” Reuters, Aug 14, 2017 09:02am