For much of the past three decades, discussions about energy and energy infrastructure have focused primarily on one question:
How do we transition to a lower-carbon future?
Today, another challenge has rapidly moved to the forefront:
How do we produce enough reliable electricity to support a rapidly electrifying and increasingly digital economy?
Ironically, the question that dominated energy policy for much of the past three decades also helped create today’s challenge. Across much of the developed world, the drive to reduce emissions often focused on retiring existing dispatchable generation, particularly coal-fired power plants, faster than equally reliable replacement capacity could be built. Combined with years of underinvestment in new baseload and dispatchable generation, the result has been tighter power markets, shrinking reserve margins, and growing concerns about grid reliability. Today, many of the same utilities and policymakers who once focused primarily on what generation should be retired are now asking how to preserve, modernize, repower, or replace that dependable capacity. The lesson is that reliability must remain a central objective throughout any transition.
The answer is far more complicated than simply building more generation.
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