Problems With Blame. I am on the more concerned side of many when it comes to the ever-present energy crunch that I see on the horizon. Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal wrote about it over the weekend and in similar points of view brought in the climate goals as part of the equation which is this. The WSJ says the energy crunch is partly to blame on our climate goals whereas the NYT says the energy crunch hurts the climate goals. Both are mostly wrong and I’ll give you two concrete examples. First is a conversation I had with an ER doctor in 2008, who also happened to Chair the Energy Committee in the Florida State House at the time. (I point out that he’s a doctor so that you know his career wasn’t spent analyzing energy markets) He told me when we wanted to create an RPS (renewable portfolio standard) that it wasn’t the Government’s job to pick winners and losers but solar would have to compete in the free market. My other example is Texas, one of the largest users of solar and storage in the Country today, which I assure you have nothing to do with climate goals. Ultimately the energy crunch is caused by an overlap of two versions of the energy transition; solar and wind are cheaper than alternatives and electrification of everything (EVs, homes, and data) is massively increasing consumption. Climate goals aside, we simply are not doing enough to keep our grid reliable into the future.
A Thank You. Over the last few weeks there have been some big corporate offtake agreements which are always important for the market expansion and I’m glad those are happening. We’ve also seen a major expansion of the energy communities which is a major win by our policy teams, I know SEIA staff played a major role alongside other association and corporate teams. Thank you!
Opinion
Best, Yann
