Opinion The Texas Big Freeze: How a changing climate pushed the state s power grid to the brink Published June 2, 2021 Ron Jenkins via Getty Images
The following is a contributed article by Dan Esposito, senior policy analyst at Energy Innovation, and Eric Gimon, senior fellow at Energy Innovation.
Editor s Note: This is the first of a three-part op-ed series in Utility Dive based on Energy Innovation s research examining 1) what drove the extended Texas outages, 2) the degree to which energy markets failed, and 3) how different entities can improve U.S. energy market and power infrastructure resiliency against extreme events while decarbonizing the grid to mitigate future climate risk.
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6 May 2021
A new report from US think tank Energy Innovation shows that 72% of the country’s coal power fleet is now uneconomic compared to local wind and solar alternatives, or slated to retire within five years’ time. Of the 235 coal plants in the US, 182 are now generally uneconomic or have begun the process of retirement.
The authors describe this as a ‘cost crossover’ point. This marks when the costs of operating a coal plant are higher than the costs of building new wind and solar and operating those assets instead. They do not include other factors such as carbon pricing and subsidy schemes.
April 1, 2021
Two months after snow, ice, and temperatures as low as -6° F left 4 million Texans without electricity, the fight over how to power the state’s future is just heating up.
In February, the Texas grid came four minutes away from complete collapse. Half of the state’s electricity generating capacity failed. Coal, nuclear, wind, and solar plants left gaping holes in the state’s energy supply, and natural gas left the biggest: 17,000 megawatts. The outage left at least 100 people dead, and $90 billion in damages. It also sparked interest in building more power plants to guard against the next one. Last week, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary pitched one of the ambitious proposals yet: Build 10,000 MW of natural gas plants with on-site fuel storage.
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