Rethinking Energy

The Great Stranding (2021)

How Inaccurate Mainstream LCOE Estimates are Creating a Trillion-Dollar Bubble in Conventional Energy Assets.
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A large and rapidly expanding global financial bubble now exists around conventional coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro-power energy assets

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The Great Stranding:
How Inaccurate Mainstream LCOE Estimates are Creating a Trillion-Dollar Bubble in Conventional Energy Assets

For the last decade, mainstream analyses have significantly underestimated the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from conventional power plants.

Mainstream analysts assume these plants will be able to successfully sell the same quantity of electricity each year from now through 2040 and beyond.

This assumption has been false for at least ten years. The rates at which conventional power plants are utilized will continue to decrease as competitive pressure from near-zero marginal cost solar photovoltaic and onshore wind power, and battery energy storage continue to grow exponentially worldwide.

Adam Dorr and Tony Seba (RethinkX), February 2021

https://doi.org/10.61322/UUDA4616

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Whether a conventional baseload power plant is old and already fully amortized, or newly constructed, its utilization profile and electricity selling prices will change during the 2020s, pushing it into competition not only with SWB but with existing peakers as well. Few, if any, coal, gas, nuclear, or hydro power facilities will survive this transition without aggressive government intervention.

- Rethinking Energy: The Great Stranding (2021)

References

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