This volume has two parts. Book One, “Nuclear Power, Neoliberalism, Deregulation and Decarbonization,” consists of blogs, articles and papers written as events took place from 2016 to 2022, for OIlPrice, Public Utilities Fortnightly and other venues. In Book Two, “Notes on the Future of Electricity,” we take a more systematic look at the issues in order to draw conclusions.

When we began to write these analyses of current events in Book One, late in 2015, the energy sector was a dull place, featuring slow growth and flat prices. Since then, the price of oil quadrupled, that of natural gas tripled and temperatures during the eight year period hit record highs. Coal fueled 33% of U.S. electric power in 2015 and only 20% in 2022 while the renewable share of generation rose from 13% to 22%, and it will go even higher because power companies, today, build almost nothing but renewable generators. Big changes and more to come. 

To narrate this story, more or less on a real time basis, we selected 66 of our articles and papers, written at the time of the events. No editing afterwards to correct bad calls, other than correction of typos and removal of extraneous bullet points — what you see is what we wrote. The editors at Public Utilities Fortnightly and OilPrice.com  wrote the headlines, which reflect how they saw the issues at the time. For some articles, we added a postscript to bring the reader up to date. Book One concludes with articles on the financial consequences of the trends discussed, and a summary analysis. 

The articles fall loosely into seven general categories:

●   The electricity business will decarbonize, decentralize and grow faster. 

●   The industry will need new financial policies to attract investors.

●  The industry has to increase capital spending, which it can finance, to meet climate goals.

●  The grid, in its present physical condition, cannot provide reliable service, meet climate challenges and fulfill new demand for services.

●  Big nuclear projects, no longer viable as commercial ventures,  will require government support or ownership to succeed. 

●  Regulation, law and economics shape public policy, and attract  capital, the key ingredient needed to  enable electrification.

●  International events affect energy security, influence regulation and American ideas about deregulation, and giant European energy companies play a significant role in U.S. markets.

In Book Two, “Notes on the Future of Electricity,” we discuss four topics of importance in understanding the prospects for electricity markets. In it we argue that:

● The electricity market is at a turning point. Electrifying the economy will end decades of static sales but it will  reduce greenhouse gas emissions only if the electricity producers decarbonize their generation first. Technological innovations, however, enable new producers to enter the electricity marketplace, so legacy producers will lose market share.

● Nuclear power, despite talk of a renaissance, will not play a significant role in decarbonizing electricity for many years, at least not in the United States. Perhaps smaller nuclear stations and breakthroughs in fusion will change that picture, but the electricity industry needs economical decarbonization now, which nuclear power will not provide. 

● Distributed resources (owned by customers) threaten  incumbent electricity suppliers. In extreme form, they could start the “utility death spiral,” weaken utility finances, affect energy equity, and limit the value of new central station resources.

● Balancing the requirements of reliability, affordability, and  sustainability (the energy trilemma) will become increasingly difficult in an environment of competition, new technologies and climate change, leading to energy equity issues. 

In writing these articles, we drew on our long experience in financing, rating and analyzing energy companies and in working with regulators, governments, academics and venture capitalists here and abroad. Do we have biases? Sure. We believe that environmental and technological forces will change the electricity marketplace, with or without the acquiescence of the players in it. We don’t see delay and denial as viable strategies because change could take place faster than anticipated. Having said that, we do not have any illusions about the tepid interest in change, maybe even the camouflaged hostility to it, exhibited by so many energy companies. The current attention to climate and national security, though, can create the biggest boom in the electricity sector since the 1950s, so why fight it?