The late Harvard Prof. James McCarthy gave a talk years ago in which he said that the climate-change denial story would have three phases: (1) it’s not true; and when that became untenable, (2) it’s too expensive to do anything about it; then finally (3) it’s too late. While (1) hangs on forever in some form or other, the current administration seems to be somewhere between (2) and (3). This Substack and previous ones by Dr. Dessler are great demonstrations that refute (2). I have to fear the future if (3) is the path we choose.
Once you know the economics, you see clear as day how the energy source with the highest marginal cost (coal or gas) sets the price. So if your electricity bill is high, you know who to blame.
Good news. Ending citizens united to get fossil fuel companies out of the political disinformation biz, and/or a tax on emissions is sine qua non in this fight. Otherwise, children a grandchildren will pay huge price for our stupidity. Citizens Climate Lobby has best strategy
I find it incomprehensible that somehow the rising cost of electricity is a news story with nary a mention of the fact that renewable energy is the solution.
Do you watch "raw" press conferences (C-SPAN), or those edited via some media outlet?
The Trump Administration is the first to bypass the White House Correspondents' Association (1914) to hand-pick those outlets eligible to cover any event. They black-balled the AP because they didn't accede to calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America."
Biden-era pressers included reporters from Fox (who were in fact called on for questions). Which corruption scandals, viral fluff stories, or policy issues was Biden fed only softball questions on?
Of course, Trump tried to use "lawfare" extortion on Murdoch's Wall St. Journal, so maybe Murdoch's Fox coverage will start to be more critical as a result.
"It is worth noting that overall system costs will increase as variable renewables reach higher penetrations due to the increased need for energy storage and dispatchable resources to fill in gaps in generation."
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Another increase in "overall system cost" will come with upgrading the transmission network. This isn't just about replacing aging equipment, but building out with more *resilient* infrastructure. For example, with the increase in derechos like the one that ran from Houston to New Orleans, transmission towers that were rated for 60mph (96kph) winds would today be required to handle 80mph (128kph). Also, in the US, tariffs significantly increase the material cost per stanchion and per transmission mile.
"There is a persistent argument in certain circles that renewable energy is associated with higher costs than fossil fuels...."
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Independent of greenhouse gas emissions, the "cost" of fossil fuels includes a lot of externalities: massive oil spills despoiling natural environments (including a whole lot of places that don't make US news), contamination of aquifers, warping of international relations (Saudi Arabia is our ally...really?), lung- and heart-damaging combustion products, coal slurry pond dams, mountaintop removal, and access canals accelerating the disappearance of south Louisiana. The US spends $80B a year just on defense of the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.
Between the PTC and RECs, solar/wind received subsidies nearly equal to the LCOE of gas. Let’s not pretend that subsidies really lower costs.
An alternative for the windy states would have been to replace expensive coal with cheaper gas, rather than highly subsidized wind. This is not good for climate change, but you only discuss the cost.
The analysis is misleading because, in the long run, solar/wind costs will rise exponentially due to overbuilding, storage, and transmission upgrades. The more reliable the intermittent energy, the more expensive it becomes.
The costs of fully installed solar farms, wind farms, and BESS have not decreased over the last six years. Check the past NREL and EIA price guides, and you will see that I am correct. The falling price of solar modules and battery cells is irrelevant.
Advocates of solar and wind power routinely use unrealistically low cost inputs in their models, rather than utilizing research-grade data available from the NREL and the EIA.
For those who are interested in an accurate prediction of future solar and wind costs:
As I note in the piece, "at the same time, the costs of renewables have continued to fall at a remarkable pace. Utility scale solar generation is around 66% cheaper today than it was a decade ago, and wind is around 33% cheaper, excluding the effects of any changes in tax credits."
The links you provided show LCOE calculations. The LCOE is extremely sensitive to highly volatile interest rates. Interest rates fell for a while but have returned to a more historic rate. LCOE can also be gamed with subsidies and cherry-picked capacity factors..
I recommended reading the historical capital price guides by NREL and the EIA. The intrinsic cost of solar and storage is based on CAPEX and OPEX, not the LCOE. I suspect no one read the reports, so here is the capital cost data from the EIA reports:
2020 BESS kWh $347
2022 BESS kWh $329
2023 BESS kWh $318
2024 BESS kWh $435
2025 BESS kWh $395
2020 PV Solar kWac $1,313
2022 PV Solar kWac $1,327
2023 PV Solar kWac $1,448
2024 PV Solar kWac $1,502
2025 PV Solar kWac $1,379
They didn’t publish a report for 2021. If you calculate a trend line, you see a slight increase in prices. NREL can go even higher. Their latest guide (2024) has BESS at $472/kWh. The NREL reports show a similar pattern. Fully installed solar, wind, and battery systems are not falling in price. Modules fell, but transformers rose.
I agree with @JohnS. These #s distort what is going on.
That graph you posted made me squint for a day. There are problems with both the pricing and the energy sources.
I pay nowhere near the cents/kwh that your trend line claims for my State. This is a critical point if your article isn't meant to speak to industry and commerce. So I questioned how you crunched these #s to tell homeowners of America the good news. Because the common homeowner is paying HIGHER electric bills despite renewables.
One problem with EIA and other sources is the composite price #s. Composite pricing mashes residential + industrial + commercial. In my State, the largest consumer of renewables is industry. Perhaps industry pays a cheaper kwh rate, and they skew my State's # down. But your article doesn't read like it's addressed to industries, and it doesn't pull out this detail.
Another problem is doing a linear fit that masks the highs with the lows. The low prices of electricity in the past hide the higher prices in recent years. Your graph has 20+ years of data fit to a line. That's not the way to graph trends. Sampling sizes matter.
In my State, the regulatory agency keeps approving price INCREASES to residential customers. The claim is that higher kwh pricing is needed to offset the capital investments for renewables.
For example, my State of Wisconsin released a report in 2020 on energy. Residential prices were $.096/kwh in 2005. In 2017, that price rose to $.144. That is a 66% price increase to homeowners in just a little over 1 decade!
Now, you could make an argument that certain agencies are inflating pricing data ... but you aren't addressing that factor. You're saying the cents/kwh is cheaper now than in the past because of renewables. Or one could make the argument that residential demand continues to exceed supply and has been raising prices, like bigger houses needing bigger A/C units and bigger fridges. But you don't claim that. So the data to support lower prices because of renewables is weak.
It's good to call out how the energy generation mix has changed over time. But this article doesn't make a strong argument that generation from renewables is driving prices down. In my State, for example, renewable generation rose from 118BTU in 2005 to 141BTU. But less than 6% of that energy is from wind or solar, which are the sources that climate advocates want. Well, I could make an argument that the State regulatory agency is lying about the need for price hikes because the amount of wind/solar that I get to my home isn't rapidly rising. Your article doesn't address this point about how much electricity is actually generated by wind or solar over time and available to homeowners.
My State could be a "purple" anomaly. If it is, then a State by State analysis is needed instead of the whole country graph. I'm skeptical. I've not heard of anyone in America celebrating that their utility bills are cheaper after going Net Zero. Usually the people I saw at wind/solar events or Net Zero Zoom meetings were members of the Top 5% income earners, as was I. I crunched #s and grew very skeptical about what was going on, and which homeowners could afford all this. Your article isn't about homeowners owning onsite generation but even utility scale generation isn't getting cheaper.
And as @JohnS noted, NREL has good data about what's going on. Homeowners who are paying electric bills are not seeing cheaper rates because of renewables.
The main figure in this piece shows the change in electricity price since 2001 in each state, not the absolute electricity price. If you look at the four-panel figure you will see the average electricity price in WI in 2024 is around 15 cents per kWh, putting it in the middle of the pack, though its had among the smallest increase in renewables compared to other Midwestern states.
I've used both NREL and LBNL numbers in the piece to discuss changes in the cost of utility scale solar and wind over time; I agree they are good resources here.
I get you're wanting to say there's a downward price price change via the graph.
I'm saying that this graph is misleading in it's linear fit of price change.
If the price change is literally costing utility consumers *less*, then there should be data points in the negative, below 0.
If I had paid 1c/kwh in 2001, and now pay .5c/kwh, then my State should show a -.5c in this graph. That graph has NO datapoints showing a negative price change. The trend in change is going down, slightly. OK. But ALL trends are positive, so all price changes have been *increasing*.
The examples is, as I said for Wisconsin, " Residential prices were $.096/kwh in 2005. In 2017, that price rose to $.144. That is a 66% price increase to homeowners in just a little over 1 decade! "
You'd need to calculate a 2nd derivative to get at the rate of change in utility prices -- whether price increases are now decelerating.
Except those are nominal prices, not real prices. If you expect electricity prices to be rising at a lower rate than inflation you are out of luck; thats not the case in any state, even those with zero renewable buildout over the past 24 years.
But hydro (whether new or not) when combined with solar and wind cuts down or eliminates the intermittency. Managing water behind a dam as a "battery" for times of no sun (night, winter) makes enormous sense, but requires the sources of energy to be properly managed and integrated. In places where hydro is not available, pumped hydro plants have been used. These require 2 lakes perhaps 200 to 300m different in elevation (and often available at old mines) that pump water from the lower to upper when excess power occurs (during day for solar) and then water runs through turbines to generate power when needed. The water is recycled. Switzerland has a lot of pumped hydro. It has a cost up front to build but lasts for over 80 years and is almost as efficient as a new conventional battery (80 to 90%), but the latter become less efficient over time and have to be tossed (etc) over a couple of decades.
Be good to know the barriers to having a fully integrated system. Often different private companies own different bits and this prevents integration
One disadvantage of pumped storage is the sheer volume of water required to store large amounts of energy. Pump a cubic meter of water up 100 m and you have stored at most 0.28 kWh. A cubic meter of batteries can store 1500 times as much energy … and you can put it anywhere.
Current estimates of capital costs for storage systems (not just the batteries) are about $300 per kWh. Hard to put a number on pumped storage but one benchmark would be the proposed facility at Meaford, Ontario which is estimated at $375 US per kWh. As you point out, this facility would last longer but, on the other hand, the cost of batteries is going down while the cost of infrastructure projects is going up.
The correlation in the graph appears at first glance to be driven by a handful of states with a high fraction of renewable generation. These small states also export a large fraction of their generation. Is it possible that it is actually these exports have kept intra-state costs down?
If you exclude the last four datapoints you'd still get a negative trend (albeit slightly less negative). But the point on interstate exports and imports is an important one. Electricity grids don't respect state borders (at least outside of Texas!), so a slightly more rigorous version of this analysis would probably use NERC regions or subregions.
It still looks like low population states dominate the correlation. Given the huge range, one might argue that you should use a correlation where each point is weighted according to its population or the size of its electricity market.
It’s easy to idealize nuclear or gas from a distance, but utilities like NextEra, which actually build and operate all of the above—including solar, gas, and nuclear—are dealing with hard constraints.
As CEO John Ketchum recently explained:
- Solar + storage can be deployed in 12–18 months—that’s speed the grid needs now.
- New gas plants face 7+ year delays due to turbine shortages, labor bottlenecks, and tariffs.
- SMRs (small modular reactors) are still 10 years away at best, and even then, costlier than gas.
- By 2032, Ketchum warns, that “cheap” gas is likely to be three times more expensive than today.
So when the head of one of America’s largest energy companies says “If we take renewables off the table, we are going to have a real power shortage problem”, we should take that seriously.
It’s not about ideology—it’s about deployment timelines, cost curves, and grid stability now.
What I find really ironic is because of policy whiplash, Ketchum is now talking about renewables being "a bridge to gas in 2032" when in reality with right-minded, long-term thinking that takes climate change seriously, natural gas is supposed to be the bridge or transition fuel to renewables and nuclear. Unbelievable!
I am rooting for New Mexico to lead the nation in percentage of non-hydro renewables sometime between 2027, when the SunZia project is complete, and 2031, when Arizona Public Service shuts down the remaining coal plants. I estimate that we will be approaching 75 - 80% generation by wind and solar at that time.
What do we mean by "electricity prices"? If we are referring solely to the cost of energy generation, solar and wind are the most affordable options. However, their large-scale deployment necessitates a restructuring and expansion of the grid, which can easily outbalance their cost-effectiveness. Germany serves as a prime example: despite the growth of renewables, particularly solar and wind, electricity prices have not decreased because resources are now primarily allocated to grid development. In fact, Germany has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. Things are more complex than it seems. I wouldn't present the transition to renewables as the cheapest solution; it involves sacrifices, including economic ones, which should not be downplayed.
By electricity prices I mean just that: the average electricity price paid by consumers each year in each state. That should nominally include any system costs (transmission, storage, etc.) that are ratebased.
FWIW, transmission costs would go up even with the legacy power plants just to harden the grid against increasing extreme weather. The total demand is growing, too, meaning new transmission capacity is required (whether for RE or thermal plants).
I believe it was Germany that built an LNG terminal in record time after Russia invaded Ukraine. Did that add to electricity prices or was that charged to the private sector?
They not only built LNG terminals, but the new government is also doubling down on new (unnecessary) gas power plants "to stabilize the grid against potential blackouts," so the story goes. So far, however, there hasn't been much change in electricity prices.
It also heavily depends on import possibility. Now Germany can import tons of cheap hydro from Norway through Denmark and cheap nuclear from France. But NW said one of the DK cables life will not be extended and Fr wants to add some datacenters. This can impact the prices
Thanks for linking to your data. Could you identify which data you used? I must be missing something, because all the state-level tables I could find go back to either 2015 or 2013.
If it's helpful, there is a lot of state-level data here which often goes back to 2001 (which I assume is similar to specific tables that Zeke used): https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/
Some metrics even go back to 1960 (but are spread across multiple files).
Its all from the electric power monthly report. The EIA just has different ways to access that data (and historical issues of the report!). But the two links above will get you the price by state and generation by state for each month since 2001 that I used in this piece.
Certainly we have not yet seen fossil fuel use go down significantly, but it’s also true that, had renewable energy not been deployed at scale, emissions would today be much higher. Take the W where you find it.
I'm no climate scientist and I don't have the relevant data, but renewables require significant amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture ?
I'm not against renewables, because we certainly need to cut fossil fuels, but renewables will never be able to remove CO2 and other GHG's from the atmosphere.
Why don't people talk about restoring the Biosphere? Agriculture has a lot to answer for, in particular animal agriculture. Animal agriculture has driven deforestation, destruction of the oceans, and huge monoculture crops to feed the billions of sentient animals bred into existence each year.
It's ecosystem restoration that will get us out of our dire ecological situation. Renewables can't restore our fresh water stores, ocean acidification and dead zones, deforestion, nitrogen pollution, soul degradation etc
Yes, "wind and solar – are fundamentally fuel-saving resources". When the wind pipes up or the sun shines, natgas turbine plants can cool off and shut down. This raises costs of their product in two ways. Cost recovery of the capital investment is spread over fewer hours of generation, raising that cost. The added cooling/heating cycles strain their metal, using up such on/off cycles, just like a jet plane engine has specific on/off cycle limits.
In response to climate hysteria, we are doing truly absurd things that would be very bad and that would make no sense even if everything the climatists said were true. All the renewables we are building will have no measurable effect on anything but our wallets. We are risking catastrophic electrical grid failures – the kind of disaster that kills people – for absolutely no reason.
Just like what happened in Spain recently
It is becoming increasingly apparent that wind, solar and batteries when pursued at high penetration levels result in high costs, lower reliability and poorer operational outcomes.
Wind and solar today supply roughly 5% of global primary energy, After approximately $5 trillion of investment how much do you think it’s going to cost to get to 30%? More transmission lines and more expensive storage are only going to dramatically increase costs.
We need to use existing infrastructure at retired cold plants and build hundreds of more nuclear plants. Hopefully the Westinghouse AP 1000.
What do you just think caused the blackout in Spain? Too much solar and not enough grid inertia supplied by large spinning generators. The reports are out there for you to read.
The Spanish report focuses on “ poor voltage control”, but a significant piece of that was too much solar generation. One solar plant in particular initiated the whole event. And then the grid collapsed due to lack of spinning inertia.
A mix of approximately 30% renewables result in the lowest price of electricity delivered to the consumer and a more reliable grid.
"Here’s a sharp, well-informed, and slightly witty reply you could post:
"So let me get this straight: you're blaming a single grid event in Spain on solar, ignoring decades of fossil-fueled blackouts, and using that to claim the entire clean energy transition is absurd? That’s some next-level cherry-picking.
"The truth is: no energy source is immune to grid risk — but blaming solar for reliability issues without acknowledging outdated grid design, poor planning, or fossil fuel supply shocks is disingenuous. Grid stability isn’t about spinning inertia alone anymore; modern systems use advanced forecasting, battery support, and fast-response tech that’s already keeping lights on in places with high renewables like Denmark and parts of the U.S.
"And if cost is your concern — $5 trillion over decades for a global shift to clean energy isn’t some reckless gamble. It’s less than what the world spends every 5–7 years subsidizing fossil fuels and repairing climate-related damage. Clean doesn’t mean perfect — but neither does sticking with the energy equivalent of a rotary phone."
Not sure about the "witty" part - the last sentence was a little lame. A good enough reply, though. There you have it, Mr. Kaminski. ChatGPT thinks you're "disingenuous". Argue with it, not with me!
So what I’ve learned from AI chat boxes, like Grok 3, is that you need to keep pushing them because their initial response is based on a limited search of available data. And you get much more data if you continue to ask questions.
I use Grok and I have similar responses from that chat bot, but I continue to push and I eventually get a reasonable response which means grid inertia is absolutely critical to maintain grid liability.
There’s no doubt in my mind. there’s too many Electrical engineers and PHDs out there that agree with that.
Inverter-based resources are getting better, but it’s hard to forecast the day when they can ride through a grid fault and maintain grid stability.
It’s a good technology advancement question, my point is, we’ll see what happens. I believe that there’s a maximum penetration level of renewables currently and It’s difficult to forecast the future of what electronic stability can add.
The late Harvard Prof. James McCarthy gave a talk years ago in which he said that the climate-change denial story would have three phases: (1) it’s not true; and when that became untenable, (2) it’s too expensive to do anything about it; then finally (3) it’s too late. While (1) hangs on forever in some form or other, the current administration seems to be somewhere between (2) and (3). This Substack and previous ones by Dr. Dessler are great demonstrations that refute (2). I have to fear the future if (3) is the path we choose.
I think Suzuki is probably right , and number 3 is upon us.
Thanks for spreading the good word. I recently wrote about how energy markets work: https://www.complexeffects.com/p/a-lesson-for-maga-in-electricity
Once you know the economics, you see clear as day how the energy source with the highest marginal cost (coal or gas) sets the price. So if your electricity bill is high, you know who to blame.
Good news. Ending citizens united to get fossil fuel companies out of the political disinformation biz, and/or a tax on emissions is sine qua non in this fight. Otherwise, children a grandchildren will pay huge price for our stupidity. Citizens Climate Lobby has best strategy
I find it incomprehensible that somehow the rising cost of electricity is a news story with nary a mention of the fact that renewable energy is the solution.
"I find it incomprehensible...."
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Take a deep breath.
It's July 2025. You should have made peace with the incomprehensible obscenities of the Trump administration and its complicit news media by now.
Complicit news media! Are you joking!?
Do you watch the White House press conferences and see how much more confrontational than in the last administration?
Wait a minute, now I see the problem with Biden coverage! They let him get away with so much!
They didn't ask Biden why he put a drug-addled billionaire in charge of gutting the US's pre-eminent government agencies.
They didn't ask Biden why he wanted to take over Canada and Greenland.
They didn't ask Biden why he had masked secret police abducting people off the street.
They didn't ask Biden why he came up with a way for people to bribe him via cryptocurrency.
They didn't ask Biden why he was promoting last century's energy supply while disabling the energy projects of the future.
They didn't ask Biden why he put a tariff on Canada because of fentanyl trafficking.
They didn't ask Biden why he put tariffs to raise prices on important imports like steel, rare earths and Canadian lumber.
Do you watch "raw" press conferences (C-SPAN), or those edited via some media outlet?
The Trump Administration is the first to bypass the White House Correspondents' Association (1914) to hand-pick those outlets eligible to cover any event. They black-balled the AP because they didn't accede to calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America."
Biden-era pressers included reporters from Fox (who were in fact called on for questions). Which corruption scandals, viral fluff stories, or policy issues was Biden fed only softball questions on?
Of course, Trump tried to use "lawfare" extortion on Murdoch's Wall St. Journal, so maybe Murdoch's Fox coverage will start to be more critical as a result.
"It is worth noting that overall system costs will increase as variable renewables reach higher penetrations due to the increased need for energy storage and dispatchable resources to fill in gaps in generation."
----
Another increase in "overall system cost" will come with upgrading the transmission network. This isn't just about replacing aging equipment, but building out with more *resilient* infrastructure. For example, with the increase in derechos like the one that ran from Houston to New Orleans, transmission towers that were rated for 60mph (96kph) winds would today be required to handle 80mph (128kph). Also, in the US, tariffs significantly increase the material cost per stanchion and per transmission mile.
"There is a persistent argument in certain circles that renewable energy is associated with higher costs than fossil fuels...."
----
Independent of greenhouse gas emissions, the "cost" of fossil fuels includes a lot of externalities: massive oil spills despoiling natural environments (including a whole lot of places that don't make US news), contamination of aquifers, warping of international relations (Saudi Arabia is our ally...really?), lung- and heart-damaging combustion products, coal slurry pond dams, mountaintop removal, and access canals accelerating the disappearance of south Louisiana. The US spends $80B a year just on defense of the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.
Between the PTC and RECs, solar/wind received subsidies nearly equal to the LCOE of gas. Let’s not pretend that subsidies really lower costs.
An alternative for the windy states would have been to replace expensive coal with cheaper gas, rather than highly subsidized wind. This is not good for climate change, but you only discuss the cost.
The analysis is misleading because, in the long run, solar/wind costs will rise exponentially due to overbuilding, storage, and transmission upgrades. The more reliable the intermittent energy, the more expensive it becomes.
The costs of fully installed solar farms, wind farms, and BESS have not decreased over the last six years. Check the past NREL and EIA price guides, and you will see that I am correct. The falling price of solar modules and battery cells is irrelevant.
Advocates of solar and wind power routinely use unrealistically low cost inputs in their models, rather than utilizing research-grade data available from the NREL and the EIA.
For those who are interested in an accurate prediction of future solar and wind costs:
https://schlanj.substack.com/p/even-if-solar-panels-and-batteries
As I note in the piece, "at the same time, the costs of renewables have continued to fall at a remarkable pace. Utility scale solar generation is around 66% cheaper today than it was a decade ago, and wind is around 33% cheaper, excluding the effects of any changes in tax credits."
Wind has not decreased that much over the past 6 years (but is down ~33% from 10 years ago): https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy25osti/91775.pdf
Solar has continued to fall in cost: https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar
The links you provided show LCOE calculations. The LCOE is extremely sensitive to highly volatile interest rates. Interest rates fell for a while but have returned to a more historic rate. LCOE can also be gamed with subsidies and cherry-picked capacity factors..
I recommended reading the historical capital price guides by NREL and the EIA. The intrinsic cost of solar and storage is based on CAPEX and OPEX, not the LCOE. I suspect no one read the reports, so here is the capital cost data from the EIA reports:
2020 BESS kWh $347
2022 BESS kWh $329
2023 BESS kWh $318
2024 BESS kWh $435
2025 BESS kWh $395
2020 PV Solar kWac $1,313
2022 PV Solar kWac $1,327
2023 PV Solar kWac $1,448
2024 PV Solar kWac $1,502
2025 PV Solar kWac $1,379
They didn’t publish a report for 2021. If you calculate a trend line, you see a slight increase in prices. NREL can go even higher. Their latest guide (2024) has BESS at $472/kWh. The NREL reports show a similar pattern. Fully installed solar, wind, and battery systems are not falling in price. Modules fell, but transformers rose.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/archive/2020/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2020.pdf
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/assumptions/pdf/table_8.2.pdf
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/assumptions/pdf/elec_cost_perf.pdf
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2025.pdf
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/assumptions/pdf/EMM_Assumptions.pdf
I agree with @JohnS. These #s distort what is going on.
That graph you posted made me squint for a day. There are problems with both the pricing and the energy sources.
I pay nowhere near the cents/kwh that your trend line claims for my State. This is a critical point if your article isn't meant to speak to industry and commerce. So I questioned how you crunched these #s to tell homeowners of America the good news. Because the common homeowner is paying HIGHER electric bills despite renewables.
One problem with EIA and other sources is the composite price #s. Composite pricing mashes residential + industrial + commercial. In my State, the largest consumer of renewables is industry. Perhaps industry pays a cheaper kwh rate, and they skew my State's # down. But your article doesn't read like it's addressed to industries, and it doesn't pull out this detail.
Another problem is doing a linear fit that masks the highs with the lows. The low prices of electricity in the past hide the higher prices in recent years. Your graph has 20+ years of data fit to a line. That's not the way to graph trends. Sampling sizes matter.
In my State, the regulatory agency keeps approving price INCREASES to residential customers. The claim is that higher kwh pricing is needed to offset the capital investments for renewables.
For example, my State of Wisconsin released a report in 2020 on energy. Residential prices were $.096/kwh in 2005. In 2017, that price rose to $.144. That is a 66% price increase to homeowners in just a little over 1 decade!
(Sources: https://psc.wi.gov/Pages/ServiceType/OEI/WisconsinEnergyStatistics.aspx, https://psc.wi.gov/Documents/OEI/WisconsinEnergyStatistics/Final_Wisconsin%20Energy%20Statistics%20book%202017pdf%20v5_0.pdf)
Now, you could make an argument that certain agencies are inflating pricing data ... but you aren't addressing that factor. You're saying the cents/kwh is cheaper now than in the past because of renewables. Or one could make the argument that residential demand continues to exceed supply and has been raising prices, like bigger houses needing bigger A/C units and bigger fridges. But you don't claim that. So the data to support lower prices because of renewables is weak.
It's good to call out how the energy generation mix has changed over time. But this article doesn't make a strong argument that generation from renewables is driving prices down. In my State, for example, renewable generation rose from 118BTU in 2005 to 141BTU. But less than 6% of that energy is from wind or solar, which are the sources that climate advocates want. Well, I could make an argument that the State regulatory agency is lying about the need for price hikes because the amount of wind/solar that I get to my home isn't rapidly rising. Your article doesn't address this point about how much electricity is actually generated by wind or solar over time and available to homeowners.
My State could be a "purple" anomaly. If it is, then a State by State analysis is needed instead of the whole country graph. I'm skeptical. I've not heard of anyone in America celebrating that their utility bills are cheaper after going Net Zero. Usually the people I saw at wind/solar events or Net Zero Zoom meetings were members of the Top 5% income earners, as was I. I crunched #s and grew very skeptical about what was going on, and which homeowners could afford all this. Your article isn't about homeowners owning onsite generation but even utility scale generation isn't getting cheaper.
And as @JohnS noted, NREL has good data about what's going on. Homeowners who are paying electric bills are not seeing cheaper rates because of renewables.
Hi JP,
The main figure in this piece shows the change in electricity price since 2001 in each state, not the absolute electricity price. If you look at the four-panel figure you will see the average electricity price in WI in 2024 is around 15 cents per kWh, putting it in the middle of the pack, though its had among the smallest increase in renewables compared to other Midwestern states.
I've used both NREL and LBNL numbers in the piece to discuss changes in the cost of utility scale solar and wind over time; I agree they are good resources here.
Zeke,
I get you're wanting to say there's a downward price price change via the graph.
I'm saying that this graph is misleading in it's linear fit of price change.
If the price change is literally costing utility consumers *less*, then there should be data points in the negative, below 0.
If I had paid 1c/kwh in 2001, and now pay .5c/kwh, then my State should show a -.5c in this graph. That graph has NO datapoints showing a negative price change. The trend in change is going down, slightly. OK. But ALL trends are positive, so all price changes have been *increasing*.
The examples is, as I said for Wisconsin, " Residential prices were $.096/kwh in 2005. In 2017, that price rose to $.144. That is a 66% price increase to homeowners in just a little over 1 decade! "
You'd need to calculate a 2nd derivative to get at the rate of change in utility prices -- whether price increases are now decelerating.
Except those are nominal prices, not real prices. If you expect electricity prices to be rising at a lower rate than inflation you are out of luck; thats not the case in any state, even those with zero renewable buildout over the past 24 years.
Very helpful, thanks.
But hydro (whether new or not) when combined with solar and wind cuts down or eliminates the intermittency. Managing water behind a dam as a "battery" for times of no sun (night, winter) makes enormous sense, but requires the sources of energy to be properly managed and integrated. In places where hydro is not available, pumped hydro plants have been used. These require 2 lakes perhaps 200 to 300m different in elevation (and often available at old mines) that pump water from the lower to upper when excess power occurs (during day for solar) and then water runs through turbines to generate power when needed. The water is recycled. Switzerland has a lot of pumped hydro. It has a cost up front to build but lasts for over 80 years and is almost as efficient as a new conventional battery (80 to 90%), but the latter become less efficient over time and have to be tossed (etc) over a couple of decades.
Be good to know the barriers to having a fully integrated system. Often different private companies own different bits and this prevents integration
One disadvantage of pumped storage is the sheer volume of water required to store large amounts of energy. Pump a cubic meter of water up 100 m and you have stored at most 0.28 kWh. A cubic meter of batteries can store 1500 times as much energy … and you can put it anywhere.
But how much cost are those batteries and how long do they last!
Current estimates of capital costs for storage systems (not just the batteries) are about $300 per kWh. Hard to put a number on pumped storage but one benchmark would be the proposed facility at Meaford, Ontario which is estimated at $375 US per kWh. As you point out, this facility would last longer but, on the other hand, the cost of batteries is going down while the cost of infrastructure projects is going up.
Anyway pumped hydro depends on the availability of appropriate lakes.
I found this:
Currently, the cost of pumped hydro energy storage is around $150 per kWh, while the cost of battery storage ranges from $300 to $500 per kWh.
It depends where you are and what country.
The correlation in the graph appears at first glance to be driven by a handful of states with a high fraction of renewable generation. These small states also export a large fraction of their generation. Is it possible that it is actually these exports have kept intra-state costs down?
If you exclude the last four datapoints you'd still get a negative trend (albeit slightly less negative). But the point on interstate exports and imports is an important one. Electricity grids don't respect state borders (at least outside of Texas!), so a slightly more rigorous version of this analysis would probably use NERC regions or subregions.
It still looks like low population states dominate the correlation. Given the huge range, one might argue that you should use a correlation where each point is weighted according to its population or the size of its electricity market.
Should that be based on total kWh instead? Aunt Patootie and the Giant Widget Corporation represent widely disparate usage.
That would be another option. I don’t think there is a “right” way to do this.
It’s easy to idealize nuclear or gas from a distance, but utilities like NextEra, which actually build and operate all of the above—including solar, gas, and nuclear—are dealing with hard constraints.
As CEO John Ketchum recently explained:
- Solar + storage can be deployed in 12–18 months—that’s speed the grid needs now.
- New gas plants face 7+ year delays due to turbine shortages, labor bottlenecks, and tariffs.
- SMRs (small modular reactors) are still 10 years away at best, and even then, costlier than gas.
- By 2032, Ketchum warns, that “cheap” gas is likely to be three times more expensive than today.
So when the head of one of America’s largest energy companies says “If we take renewables off the table, we are going to have a real power shortage problem”, we should take that seriously.
It’s not about ideology—it’s about deployment timelines, cost curves, and grid stability now.
What I find really ironic is because of policy whiplash, Ketchum is now talking about renewables being "a bridge to gas in 2032" when in reality with right-minded, long-term thinking that takes climate change seriously, natural gas is supposed to be the bridge or transition fuel to renewables and nuclear. Unbelievable!
References:
https://www.powermag.com/decarbonization-whiplash-prompts-a-power-sector-recalibration/
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/nextera-ceo-says-renewables-needed-bridge-expanding-gas-power-2025-06-10/
I am rooting for New Mexico to lead the nation in percentage of non-hydro renewables sometime between 2027, when the SunZia project is complete, and 2031, when Arizona Public Service shuts down the remaining coal plants. I estimate that we will be approaching 75 - 80% generation by wind and solar at that time.
What do we mean by "electricity prices"? If we are referring solely to the cost of energy generation, solar and wind are the most affordable options. However, their large-scale deployment necessitates a restructuring and expansion of the grid, which can easily outbalance their cost-effectiveness. Germany serves as a prime example: despite the growth of renewables, particularly solar and wind, electricity prices have not decreased because resources are now primarily allocated to grid development. In fact, Germany has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. Things are more complex than it seems. I wouldn't present the transition to renewables as the cheapest solution; it involves sacrifices, including economic ones, which should not be downplayed.
By electricity prices I mean just that: the average electricity price paid by consumers each year in each state. That should nominally include any system costs (transmission, storage, etc.) that are ratebased.
FWIW, transmission costs would go up even with the legacy power plants just to harden the grid against increasing extreme weather. The total demand is growing, too, meaning new transmission capacity is required (whether for RE or thermal plants).
I believe it was Germany that built an LNG terminal in record time after Russia invaded Ukraine. Did that add to electricity prices or was that charged to the private sector?
They not only built LNG terminals, but the new government is also doubling down on new (unnecessary) gas power plants "to stabilize the grid against potential blackouts," so the story goes. So far, however, there hasn't been much change in electricity prices.
Gas firming is necessary due to coal phaseout. Fraunhofer ise, top pro ren institute in Germany recommends 80+gw of gas and ccgt by 2035 in a pessimistic demand scenario and much more otherwise https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/paths-to-a-climate-neutral-energy-system.html
DE price would likely rise if eeg wasn't subsidized considering https://www.ewi.uni-koeln.de/en/news/medium-term-forecast-around-18-billion-euros-in-eeg-funding-in-2025/
It also heavily depends on import possibility. Now Germany can import tons of cheap hydro from Norway through Denmark and cheap nuclear from France. But NW said one of the DK cables life will not be extended and Fr wants to add some datacenters. This can impact the prices
Thanks for linking to your data. Could you identify which data you used? I must be missing something, because all the state-level tables I could find go back to either 2015 or 2013.
Thanks!
If it's helpful, there is a lot of state-level data here which often goes back to 2001 (which I assume is similar to specific tables that Zeke used): https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/
Some metrics even go back to 1960 (but are spread across multiple files).
The EIA also has a useful data browser tool; here are state-level electricity prices back to 2001, for example: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/7?agg=0,1&geo=vvvvvvvvvvvvo&endsec=vg&linechart=ELEC.PRICE.TX-ALL.M~ELEC.PRICE.TX-RES.M~ELEC.PRICE.TX-COM.M~ELEC.PRICE.TX-IND.M&columnchart=ELEC.PRICE.TX-ALL.M~ELEC.PRICE.TX-RES.M~ELEC.PRICE.TX-COM.M~ELEC.PRICE.TX-IND.M&map=ELEC.PRICE.US-ALL.M&freq=M&start=200101&end=202504&ctype=linechart<ype=pin&rtype=s&pin=&rse=0&maptype=0
And Hannah already identified the data source for generation by state: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/generation_monthly.xlsx
Thanks! I'll take a look. Does this mean the data you used came from a different source than the one you linked?
Its all from the electric power monthly report. The EIA just has different ways to access that data (and historical issues of the report!). But the two links above will get you the price by state and generation by state for each month since 2001 that I used in this piece.
Thanks! I'll take a look.
Edit: This looks like interesting information, but I was hoping to find the price information that fed Zeke's analysis.
More importantly, have renewables actually decreased emissions ? Me thinks the answer is NO
Certainly we have not yet seen fossil fuel use go down significantly, but it’s also true that, had renewable energy not been deployed at scale, emissions would today be much higher. Take the W where you find it.
No further comment ?
I'm no climate scientist and I don't have the relevant data, but renewables require significant amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture ?
I'm not against renewables, because we certainly need to cut fossil fuels, but renewables will never be able to remove CO2 and other GHG's from the atmosphere.
Why don't people talk about restoring the Biosphere? Agriculture has a lot to answer for, in particular animal agriculture. Animal agriculture has driven deforestation, destruction of the oceans, and huge monoculture crops to feed the billions of sentient animals bred into existence each year.
It's ecosystem restoration that will get us out of our dire ecological situation. Renewables can't restore our fresh water stores, ocean acidification and dead zones, deforestion, nitrogen pollution, soul degradation etc
Yes, "wind and solar – are fundamentally fuel-saving resources". When the wind pipes up or the sun shines, natgas turbine plants can cool off and shut down. This raises costs of their product in two ways. Cost recovery of the capital investment is spread over fewer hours of generation, raising that cost. The added cooling/heating cycles strain their metal, using up such on/off cycles, just like a jet plane engine has specific on/off cycle limits.
In response to climate hysteria, we are doing truly absurd things that would be very bad and that would make no sense even if everything the climatists said were true. All the renewables we are building will have no measurable effect on anything but our wallets. We are risking catastrophic electrical grid failures – the kind of disaster that kills people – for absolutely no reason.
Just like what happened in Spain recently
It is becoming increasingly apparent that wind, solar and batteries when pursued at high penetration levels result in high costs, lower reliability and poorer operational outcomes.
Wind and solar today supply roughly 5% of global primary energy, After approximately $5 trillion of investment how much do you think it’s going to cost to get to 30%? More transmission lines and more expensive storage are only going to dramatically increase costs.
We need to use existing infrastructure at retired cold plants and build hundreds of more nuclear plants. Hopefully the Westinghouse AP 1000.
What do you just think caused the blackout in Spain? Too much solar and not enough grid inertia supplied by large spinning generators. The reports are out there for you to read.
The Spanish report focuses on “ poor voltage control”, but a significant piece of that was too much solar generation. One solar plant in particular initiated the whole event. And then the grid collapsed due to lack of spinning inertia.
A mix of approximately 30% renewables result in the lowest price of electricity delivered to the consumer and a more reliable grid.
That’s the outcome we want.
Just for fun, I ran your comment through ChatGPT's Post Comment Reply Generator, AKA the Auto-fisker (https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6T5yjRS7y-post-comment-reply-generator). The result appears below:
"Here’s a sharp, well-informed, and slightly witty reply you could post:
"So let me get this straight: you're blaming a single grid event in Spain on solar, ignoring decades of fossil-fueled blackouts, and using that to claim the entire clean energy transition is absurd? That’s some next-level cherry-picking.
"The truth is: no energy source is immune to grid risk — but blaming solar for reliability issues without acknowledging outdated grid design, poor planning, or fossil fuel supply shocks is disingenuous. Grid stability isn’t about spinning inertia alone anymore; modern systems use advanced forecasting, battery support, and fast-response tech that’s already keeping lights on in places with high renewables like Denmark and parts of the U.S.
"And if cost is your concern — $5 trillion over decades for a global shift to clean energy isn’t some reckless gamble. It’s less than what the world spends every 5–7 years subsidizing fossil fuels and repairing climate-related damage. Clean doesn’t mean perfect — but neither does sticking with the energy equivalent of a rotary phone."
Not sure about the "witty" part - the last sentence was a little lame. A good enough reply, though. There you have it, Mr. Kaminski. ChatGPT thinks you're "disingenuous". Argue with it, not with me!
So what I’ve learned from AI chat boxes, like Grok 3, is that you need to keep pushing them because their initial response is based on a limited search of available data. And you get much more data if you continue to ask questions.
I use Grok and I have similar responses from that chat bot, but I continue to push and I eventually get a reasonable response which means grid inertia is absolutely critical to maintain grid liability.
There’s no doubt in my mind. there’s too many Electrical engineers and PHDs out there that agree with that.
Inverter-based resources are getting better, but it’s hard to forecast the day when they can ride through a grid fault and maintain grid stability.
It’s a good technology advancement question, my point is, we’ll see what happens. I believe that there’s a maximum penetration level of renewables currently and It’s difficult to forecast the future of what electronic stability can add.
Thanks for the feedback.
why is there such a big difference between the graphs in this article and the one in Javier Blas' s article on the rise in retail electricity prices?