“Arranging deck chairs on the Titanic if no capacity market.” (Joe Pokalsky, here)
“I have stated earlier that the ERCOT market’s reliance on scarcity pricing did not foresee an environment with high penetration of zero-marginal cost resources. Back in 2005 I generically simulated an energy-only market to demonstrate how scarcity pricing would work. I never anticipated the mass introduction of renewables at that time.” ( – Robert Borlick, below)
“(oops!) There is now a need to revise the scarcity pricing framework in the light of recent events, and to reflect ever-changing market conditions.” (Lynne Kiesling, June 30, 2021)
There is a Texas-sized rethink going on with the PUCT/ERCOT model for electricity. The experts/planners presiding over the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021 are in the redesign mode, with some breaking away to advocate a major new pricing system.…
“We’ll be setting up a mitigation program and new funds will be made available above and beyond our existing air quality funding that will mitigate those impacts.” (Liane Randolph, chair. California Air Resources Board, below)
“This huge list shows that if you mess up a grid, you have to try everything to hope to save the situation temporarily. In the proclamation: Air pollution rules–suspended. Ships in harbor—don’t connect to shore power, use your engines. Big industrial users—we’ll pay you $2/kWh not to consume energy. And yet, keeping a nuclear plant operating is not on the list.” (Meredith Angwin, August 2, 2021)
One intervention leads to another and yet another …. The ‘law of increasing intervention,’ as UK energy expert Colin Robinson coined it, is alive and well in the Golden State.…
“Let’s be clear: the frequent comparison of the fossil fuel and tobacco industries is nonsense. Fossil fuels are a valuable energy source that has done yeomen service for humankind. One gallon (3.7 liters) of gasoline (petrol) contains the equivalent of 400 hours of labor by a healthy adult. Fossil fuels raised living standards in much of the world.”
– James Hansen, June 2021
The father of the climate alarm is a straight and accurate shooter on many things, that is outside of climate models and unsettled climate dynamics. His quotation above throws water in the face of Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University, as well as such climate campaigners as Michael Mann and Andrew Dessler.
Hansen’s view is actually mainstream. There is no doubt that dense mineral energies that emerged and took hold by the end of the 19th century unleashed the machines of progress.…