If the U.S. clean energy industry had to lose the federal incentives, it could not have happened at a better time, says columnist K Kaufmann.

The Department of Energy has withdrawn a $716 million loan commitment that would have helped New Jersey upgrade the state transmission system to connect offshore wind to the grid.

Three clean energy trade groups asked DOE to reconsider its recent report on resource adequacy, which they contend uses a deterministic approach to stake out a position for not retiring any more power plants in the face of rising electricity demand.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin proudly told NARUC attendees the agency’s proposed rescission of the 2009 endangerment finding would be the “largest deregulatory action in the history of the country.”

EPA is proposing to rescind its 2009 endangerment finding, which qualifies greenhouse gases as pollutants and has been used by Democratic presidential administrations to regulate emissions from power plants and other sources.

After DOE ignored their rehearing requests, opponents of its Federal Power Act order keeping the J.H. Campbell plant have appealed the issue to the courts.

Industry experts say that while DOE's report points to a well known issue, it focuses only on keeping old plants online instead of needed new capacity.

DOE's report tries to apply one reliability metric to different markets and finds significant new capacity will be needed in some markets to avoid reliability problems by 2030.