[MCN] Utility industry insider's opinion : Utilities stand in the way of carbon-free energy

[Lance Olsen]

Excerpt : 100% renewable! 100% clean! 100% carbon free! One or all by 2030, 2040, 2050! These are variations on goals and requirements that municipalities, corporations, utilities and states are setting <https://sepapower.org/decarbonization-tracker/> to address and mitigate climate change. They are usually accompanied by programs and policies to promote renewables and clean energy through incentives, technical assistance, codes and standards. 

However, their efforts are running into perhaps an unexpected obstacle – the arcane world of utility regulation. These processes govern how utilities build out the electricity system needed to provide service to customers and integrate the increasing amounts of renewable and clean energy these same customers are adopting as technology options increase and costs decline. 

The pace and scope of regulatory processes are out of sync with the speed of technology change and adoption.  

I know it well, having spent the last seven years advocating for clean energy businesses, the six years before that at a utility seeking to drive changes in the industry landscape and approximately 15 years before that as public utilities commission chair, commissioner and staff leading efforts to improve the efficiency of the system and expand customer choice.  The current regulatory framework does not facilitate, or even readily accommodate, the innovation and rapidly changing technologies that utilities and other market players will need to deploy to achieve a renewable/clean/carbon free energy future.

https://sepapower.org/knowledge/whats-standing-in-the-way-of-a-carbon-free-future/? <https://sepapower.org/knowledge/whats-standing-in-the-way-of-a-carbon-free-future/?>
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”Precipitation is just the supply side," said study coauthor Jason Smerdon, a Lamont-Doherty paleoclimatologist. "Temperature is on the demand side, the part that dries things out." 

"If we don't see it coming in stronger in, say, the next 10 years, we might have to wonder whether we are right," said Marvel. "But all the models are projecting that you should see unprecedented drying soon, in a lot of places."

Precipitation over much of central America, Mexico the central and western United States and Europe is projected to stay about the same, or even increase. But, according to both the new study and a separate 2018 paper, rising temperatures and resulting evaporation of moisture from soils in those regions will probably predominate. 

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/eiac-ssf042919.php <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/eiac-ssf042919.php>
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