Articles by Adam Browning

Borenstein analysis of solar PV misses the point of California’s solar program

I've been getting a lot of questions about this: "Solar panels a 'loser,' professor says."

Severin Borenstein is an economics professor at UC Berkeley. He did an analysis of California's solar program and found that if you compare the current cost of distributed generation solar PV, which delivers retail power, with the wholesale power cost of a gas peaker running on pre-Katrina natural gas prices -- and leave global warming and environmental benefits out of the equation -- then solar "isn't cost effective."

Quick, someone call the Nobel Committee.

We can argue about faulty assumptions and apples-to-oranges comparisons, but that would continue to miss the forest for the trees. The point of the California Solar Initiative, and other solar programs, is not to deliver the cheapest kWh amongst all possible kWhs in year one. It's about market transformation. The entire premise of the program is to take an expensive but useful technology and make it cheap.

A great historical analogy is the commercial development of the integrated circuit, as described by Denis Hayes in this 2001 report (PDF) for the Energy Foundation:

When ‘hand wringing’ isn’t enough

If you are worried about Lake Mead drying up, think that reduced snowpack due to climate change might have something to do with it, and are looking for some answers, you could do a lot worse than listen to David Berry of the Western Resource Advocates. I always do, and he's never steered me wrong. See his timely "Clean Electric Energy Strategy for Arizona" (PDF).

And you thought the subprime mess was bad for the homebuilding industry

Well, this is certainly bad news for anyone in the Phoenix real estate market. 

Boats float, bears don’t

Greenpeace: 27 years of getting arrested in the name of the planet, and still finding new ways to do it: