What Happens When US Electricity Demand Craters?

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CleanTechnica reader BigWu lately introduced an fascinating thought experiment to my thoughts. He introduced up the ramifications for fossil gasoline energy sources if the financial system crashes and electrical energy demand drops roughly commensurately.

“We’re about to see US electricity demand crater due to the malignant and willful ignorance of our ‘leaders’ tanking the US economy,” he postulated. “The upside is that this nearly guarantees a collapse in fossil fueled generation as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear can easily out-bid fossil generators.”

It’s an important level, however let’s simply clarify why. With electrical energy demand rising, in fact, we merely depend on constructed energy crops and step by step add to them — with 92.5% of those new ones coming from renewables, mostly solar power, now. That can transition the grid to wash, renewable vitality over time, however you type of have to attend for outdated, polluting, fossil fueled energy crops to age out and retire.

Nevertheless, if electrical energy demand drops, then some present energy crops clearly should be shot off, or their electrical energy not used. To get all the way down to the fundamentals, with energy crops, you may have mounted prices (which incorporates the price to construct the facility plant) and marginal prices (which Investopedia defines as “the costs associated with producing an additional unit of output”). What are the marginal prices for photo voltaic and wind energy crops? Nearly nothing. There’s no gasoline price, since sunshine and the wind are free. What are the prices for a coal or fuel energy plant? Appreciable, since these fuels should not free.

So, if an influence plant must be shut down as a result of there simply isn’t as a lot demand as earlier than, it’s nearly undoubtedly going to be a fossil gasoline energy plant, and it undoubtedly shouldn’t be a photo voltaic or wind energy plant.

As such, even higher than having renewable vitality energy crops present 100% of recent capability annually is having electrical energy demand shrink, which instantly results in the fossil gasoline energy fleet shrinking.

In fact, there are “good” and “bad” methods to attain declining electrical energy demand. Larger vitality effectivity can carry down electrical energy demand, however the trigger BigWu is referencing is a powerful financial downturn from Donald Trump and his corrupt, brainless crew screwing up the US financial system by way of excessive tariffs, DOGE cuts, extremist immigration insurance policies, and general mismanagement of the federal authorities. Nobody actually desires their financial of monetary state of affairs to worsen, and that’s what would occur for many of us if the US financial system crashed, however the silver lining of that state of affairs might be accelerated retirement of fossil gasoline energy crops. Furthermore, it will probably be among the oldest, most polluting, most inefficient energy crops that might be shut down first.

Nobody would accuse Donald Trump of being a pro-environment, pro-climate, pro-human well being president, but when he really despatched the US into an financial collapse — the likes of which we’ve by no means seen — he might find yourself being one of many presidents most useful for slowing world heating and local weather disaster. Who is aware of? We will see.

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