On August 23, the U.S. Department of Energy released a highly anticipated study on the reliability of the U.S. electricity grid, the product of a review ordered by Secretary of Energy Rick Perry back in April. The overarching conclusion from the nearly 200-page report? Cheap and abundant natural gas is the killer of coal plants, not renewables or excessive environmental regulation, as the U.S. President and many coal proponents have claimed. The findings were notable because many energy analysts expected the report to offer a pretext for promoting the coal industry over other sources of generation while also slashing incentives for renewables. But not only did the report not explicitly recommend such a course of action, it laid the blame for the downfall of coal at the feet of natural gas, rather than on renewables or government policy. To take one example, the DOE report concludes that far from […]