3 ms·
Capacity markets are kind of controversial these days even in countries which do have them, because by design they're subsidies for inefficient fossil fuel powe
by makomk 5y ago
Capacity markets are kind of controversial these days even in countries which do have them, because by design they're subsidies for inefficient fossil fuel power plants that wouldn't be viable if they had to compete to sell power on the open market, and especially for coal power plants which are meant to go away ASAP due to global warming. Texas in particular would have had to subsidize coal power for a capacity market to make a difference in the recent grid failure. The current trend for new fossil fuel plants is natural gas but that wouldn't have done any good since a major cause of the blackouts was that even the existing power generators couldn't get enough natural gas to continue operating. Coal plants don't have this problem because they can store large quanties of fuel on site, but they've been closing down in Texas and throughout the US and the rest of the developed world.
- beerandt 5y agoAs long as renewable energy advocates refuse to subsidize sufficient reliable backup capacity as part of the cost accounting in pricing renewables, events like Texas will become even more common, and in places that can't just blame it on "because Texas".
- mindslight 5y ago> wouldn't be viable if they had to compete to sell power on the open market Capacity markets are "the open market". They're a market for a different product - the option to request power during a later period. And when we're discussing power shortages with catastrophic results, that lack of capacity is a lot more important than specific resulting spot price. Environmentally it's better to keep an extra coal plant operational than to have everyone install their own backup generators (and ad-hoc fuel storage!) to mitigate the problems with "best effort" grid supply.