Energy Policy in the Age of Wishful Thinking

Matthew L. Wald movd from the New York Times to th Nuclear Energy Institute earlier this year - a move I should have paid more attention if this one piece I came across is any indicator.

Energy Policy in the Age of Wishful Thinking | Matthw L. Wald | Nuclear Energy Institute:

...as wind has become a star performer, it’s turned the rest of the grid into Ginger Rogers. You remember Ginger Rogers? She wasn’t the star. Fred Astaire was the star. But Ginger Rogers had to do everything that Fred did, except backwards and in high heels. The rest of the grid has to march forward and backwards as wind leads, compensating for wind’s intermittency. Eventually that’s going to cause problems.

And revolutions cause casualties. Some nuclear plants are a casualty of cheap gas. And wind. So we’ve got low-carbon generation killing off zero-carbon generation. Wind is an odd situation too; we’ve got zero carbon wind driving prices down on the grid, sometimes below zero, and threatening zero-carbon nuclear.

I’m not a scientist, but this is not the way to solve the carbon problem.

Continue reading at th Nuclear Energy Institute: