While both American Electric Power and the Southwest Power Pool made mistakes that led to a blackout under good weather conditions in northwest Louisiana, the most prominent reason should serve as a warning to state policymakers going forward.

Last month, AEP’s subsidiary Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) had to cut power to around 30,000 people—most of them in Bossier Parish—for a few hours, despite the absence of storm damage or other physical disruptions. SWEPCO did this at the direction of SPP, because there simply wasn’t enough electricity available in its service area. Trying to draw too much from outside wouldn’t have helped, and attempting to push more from within risked triggering cascading failures across the system.

The shortfall occurred because SWEPCO had taken some of its generation units offline for maintenance. This maintenance had been planned months in advance, based on the assumption that mild spring weather would keep demand low and that the remaining capacity would suffice. But unexpectedly high temperatures in the SWEPCO service abrogated that plan—and the blackout followed.

In other words, both the nonprofit consortium and the heavily regulated for-profit utility got it wrong. All of this came out during what amounted to a struggle session hosted by the area’s Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, who invited representatives to a May 19 Public Service Commission meeting— where he expressed hope that someone would reimburse customers for their inconvenience.

But the more significant takeaway—and the key to understanding the blackout—was mentioned only indirectly: with dispatchable sources like coal, natural gas, and nuclear taken offline, the proportion of power expected to come from non-dispatchable sources like solar, wind, hydro, and battery storage had increased. Those sources couldn’t keep up. And this imbalance is the inevitable result of the aggressive, politically driven push toward renewable energy by AEP and other SPP providers.

From 2005 to 2023, AEP’s share of dispatchable power – called that because it can be transmitted almost instantly relative to demand – fell from 95 percent to 77 percent, while non-dispatchable sources rose from 4 to 21 percent. But by AEP’s goal, the party hardly has started. But that’s just the beginning. By 2033, it hopes to have renewable sources contributing half of all generation with fossil fuels and nuclear altogether just under that. Similarly, from 2012 to 2023 SPP saw coal and gas drop from 86 percent to 54 percent, while wind jumped to the highest single source from 8 to 37 percent.

This transition is being driven by the politically popular move to phase out fossil fuels—especially coal—under the guise of environmental concern, while replacing this portion with renewable generation. The problem, of course, is that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, which forces utilities to invest in dispatchable backup capacity anyway. That makes the whole renewable gamble far more expensive on a per-unit-of-reliable-energy basis.

And yet politicians like Campbell insist on forcing utilities down this more expensive and less reliable road, driven by their belief in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming—a faith-based narrative unsupported by hard evidence. Then they turn around and complain about rising electricity rates, pushing utilities to gamble by scrimping on dispatchable supply.

Pile on top of that the hyperbolically-skyrocketing demand for electricity from the tech sector—a sector that absolutely cannot afford blackouts—and it’s clear that if the PSC is serious about addressing this event, it should start by encouraging gas and nuclear solutions, and even reversing the decommissioning of coal mining operations.

The PSC can’t legally block AEP, Entergy, or Louisiana’s other power providers from continuing their ill-advised sprint toward renewables. But it can wield the tool Commissioner Campbell now proposes in this case: heavy fines.

No, the PSC should not force reparations for customers affected by the outage–after all, the company already lost significant revenue from the blackout, which serves as its own form of punishment. But it should impose a substantial fine. That stick might actually get utilities to rethink their dependence on renewable sources. And if that happens, consumers across Louisiana will be the ones who benefit—with lower costs and more dependable power to boot.