Clean energy, rising prices and extreme weather
(Or why we need more renewables to ensure cheaper and more reliable power.)
Hello!
Two recent articles from the wonderful climate newsroom Canary Media caught our eye.
In “Don’t blame clean energy for rising electric bills”, Jeff St John writes:
Rising electricity costs are putting American households under increasing financial stress. But clean energy isn’t to blame — even if Republican lawmakers and pro-fossil fuel advocates say otherwise.
The real drivers of climbing electricity rates are spikes in fossil gas prices, rising costs to maintain and rebuild aging and stressed grid infrastructure, and a utility business model that incentivizes big capital investments that customers have to pay off over decades.
That’s the conclusion of a new report from think tank Energy Innovation, which takes on one of the favorite talking points of those striving to reverse renewable energy mandates and climate change policies across the country.
“What we’ve heard as a misattribution was, it’s clean energy and clean energy policies that are driving these rates up,” said Brendan Pierpont, Energy Innovation’s director of electricity modeling and report author. But in fact, solar panels and wind turbines are now the cheapest source of electricity in the U.S., beating out coal and fossil gas-fired generation in almost every region of the country.
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Then, in “Solar and batteries are helping Texas weather heat waves. Here’s how,” also by Jeff St John, he writes:
The Texas power grid has broken new records throughout this summer — for how much electricity it has had to deliver as residents cranked up their air conditioners and for how much it has used solar power and batteries to keep grid emergencies at bay.
Take last week, when temperatures soared into the triple digits across most of the state, causing demand to surge on the grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.
Last Tuesday, August 20, ERCOT set a new record for peak demand on its state-spanning power grid — 85,931 megawatts, edging out the 85,612 MWrecord set 10 days prior, according to data from Grid Status, a startup that collects and shares grid data from across the country.
Luckily for the 22 million power customers reliant on ERCOT’s grid, solar power generation also hit a near-record level of 20,799 MW on August 20, just below the 20,832 MW record set two days before. That flood of solar power kept supply matched to demand throughout the midday hours — and because solar is the cheapest source of electricity on the grid today, wholesale electricity prices remained low.
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THE TAKE HOME
Far from driving up prices or making the power supply less reliable (especially during times of extreme weather), these two articles suggest that the buildout of renewables (and batteries) will be key to delivering affordable, reliable electricity in the years ahead.
Be sure to check out Canary Media for more fascinating stories about the politics, economics and technological forces shaping decarbonisation.