Monthly Archives: May 2025

by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

Part 3 of this series examines power markets, promoted by policymakers (FERC) and industry advocates to lower costs through competitive bidding and merit-order dispatch. While markets can optimize resource allocation in many sectors, they struggle to deliver affordability and reliability in electricity systems dominated by intermittent renewables. This post first explains how power markets operate, then highlights their challenges, and finally explores why they amplify the cost challenges associated with wind and solar.

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by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

In Part 1, we showed how wind and solar’s low costs over 80% of the time are overwhelmed by expenses at peak times such that they offer no cost advantages to the generation mix. Residential solar follows a similar pattern: it seems affordable for homeowners, but raises system costs through rate structures that over-incentivize adoption. Generous subsidies, like retail-rate net metering, drive excessive solar growth, risking grid stability and shifting costs to non-solar customers that are often less affluent. Less generous rates for residential solar slow adoption, but better align solar adoption with grid needs, ensuring fairness and sustainability.

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by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

Wind and solar power are often touted as the cheapest sources of electricity in many regions, capable of delivering low-cost energy for the vast majority of the time. At first glance, this might suggest that an energy mix heavily weighted toward renewables would be the most economical choice. However, this assumption overlooks a critical issue: the fat tail problem. Just because a resource is cheaper most of the time does not mean it reduces overall system costs. This post, the first in a series, explores why prioritizing wind and solar can lead to higher costs, starting with an analogy from the financial world.

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by Judith Curry and Harry DeAngelo 

We have a new paper published in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, entitled “A Critique of the Apocalyptic Climate Narrative.” The paper reflects the JACF’s ongoing interest in publishing articles that analyze important Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues in ways that are useful for investors, money managers, and corporate directors, as well as for economists and legal scholars who study corporate governance.

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by Russ Schussler (Planning Engineer)

On April  28^th Spain, Portugal and parts of France suffered a major grid outage. A  formal evaluation will likely be released at a later date cataloging many of the contributing factors and system deficiencies. Unfortunately, such reports often provide more confusion than clarity, as they tend to prioritize the triggers for system outages over the underlying causes. Post hoc it is easy to look at the vast data available and construct favored narratives about how the outage might have been avoided. This piece will look at “advance” warnings that point to the true cause of the blackout in Spain, Portugal and parts of France.

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