The advice Dr. Zaius gave to Taylor at the end of Planet of the Apes applies very well to the likes of hard-left politicians on the Louisiana Public Service Commission and the New Orleans City Council–in reference to the blackout that hit the New Orleans area some days ago which brings both lessons and warnings.

Parts of four parishes, including Orleans, were hit by what power companies euphemistically call a “load shed” last weekend. Over half of those affected were in New Orleans, and nearly 100,000 total customers lost power for several hours. One of Entergy’s nuclear reactors was already offline, and another shut down unexpectedly—presumably over concerns that, if left unaddressed, it could have triggered an even broader and longer-lasting outage.

This echoed two similar events in northern Louisiana in April. Those affected about a third as many customers as the one in south Louisiana. As part of its response, the Public Service Commission held a gripe session earlier this month about those incidents, during which both the utility involved—Southwestern Electric Power Company—and the regional transmission organization, Southwest Power Pool, tried to blame each other or simply shrugged them off as acts of the Deity.

Something similar is scheduled next week from a committee of the New Orleans City Council, composed of most councilors, which will focus on why, during repairs to Entergy’s Waterford 3 its River Bend reactor then went down. Combined, the two can supply up to 2,119 megawatts of power of the 5,376 MW total for nuclear generation. For context, natural gas generates 16,365 MW, oil 33 MW, coal 2,212 MW, solar 1,398 MW, hydroelectric 208 MW, waste heat 33 MW, and biomass 9 MW. Thus, at present, Entergy, which services areas in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, can tap into 25,634 MW of power at maximum, and the two reactors involved comprise a twelfth of the total.

Apparently, the network could stomach putting Waterford 3 offline but then dropping out the 967 MW of River Bend proved too much. Poor planning was to blame in the latter northwest Louisiana incident, where vagaries of weather system-wide for SWEPCO’s parent American Electric Power cut into the decreasing margin for error—caused by its increasing reliance on renewable sources that are almost entirely dependent on favorable weather. In other words, bad SWEPCO planning didn’t account sufficiently for the unreliability of its wind and solar resources to make up for taking fossil fuel generation offline.

In Entergy’s case, its unreliable renewable portfolio (solar) would be much less to blame, because at just over five percent it is about a fourth of AEP’s. The problem is that amount is scheduled to rise dramatically in the next five years, supposedly gaining 1,725 MW by then. At the same time, it plans to dispense with all coal generation by that time, or in aggregate pumping up the unreliable portion to 12.5 percent.

Part of this is an own goal. Despite the proclivities of the LPSC’s most radical member, Democrat Davante Lewis and on this issue fellow-traveler Democrat Foster Campbell, Louisiana, like Entergy’s regulators from other states, don’t have fixed goals of renewable energy use. Because of this, the only pressures on the company to increase the proportion are elite public opinion – except for the fact that New Orleans regulates its own utilities and has committed itself to attain “net zero” carbon emissions from Entergy (through its New Orleans subsidiary) by 2040–although there is more breathing room because the plan counts both natural gas and nuclear as contributing to net zero (to the consternation of some climate alarmists).

Entergy New Orleans (ENO) has a goal of 70 percent provision at net zero by 2030. It currently contracts, mostly through the larger company, 1,391.4 MW (summer capacity) to serve New Orleans. Of that, 48 percent is considered gas and 30 percent nuclear, and by its definition only 2 percent doesn’t meet the net zero standard. However, 10 percent of the mix comes from unreliable solar–meaning New Orleans is twice as vulnerable to outages as the rest of Entergy’s network. And because the agreement pins so much on nuclear, specific to New Orleans a nuclear plant shutdown is threatening. Remove 40 percent of nuclear systemwide, as what happened, and you have a multiplier effect on New Orleans.

Worse, an Entergy option by 2032 is to decommission its Union gas plant (the useful life of which ends by 2041), which would yank 506.2 MW from the system, dropping the gas component to just 14 percent but more importantly removing 36 percent of present capacity which it has intended to be compensated for by renewable sources, but as yet hasn’t identified how it will get there. If the city insists on sticking with its alarmist plan, either it will have to knuckle under to reality and make up for this with more gas, or live out its renewable fantasy and put its population at real risk for frequent and lasting blackouts.

In the investigation of this matter, likely the LPSC (if it follows suit as it did with the northwest blackout) will ignore Zaius and choose to seek the truth: a fixation on avoiding use of fossil fuels is a cause, if not the major reason, for blackouts. Less certain is whether the New Orleans City Council will dispense with ideology and instead seek the truth on the matter as a guide to future policy-making.