Your Fault: West Coast To See More Blackouts And Energy Price Spikes From ‘Climate Change’

If only those people in California, Washington, and Oregon gave up their fossil fueled vehicles and drove EVs, took the bus, walked. Gave up meat, moved into tiny homes. Gave a large portion of their income to the government

Climate change will likely worsen West Coast blackouts and cause energy price spikes, studies find

A pair of recent studies suggest West Coast residents and businesses will suffer more frequent blackouts and higher electricity prices because climate change will lead to more disruptive extreme weather events. The research papers were published in the scientific journal Earth’s Future.

Wait, “suggest”? They don’t know? Then why are they putting out studies?

“The impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on the grid, mostly in the form of drought and heat waves, are going to get worse under climate change,” co-author Jordan Kern, assistant professor of forestry and environment resources at North Carolina State University, said in a statement about the reports. Kern’s co-authors included professors of environmental science and engineering from the University of North Carolina, Oregon State University and the University of Washington.

In one study, computer models projected the West Coast electricity grid’s reliability between 2030 and 2060 under 11 different climate change scenarios, based on the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and how much warming results. The researchers found more likelihood of blackouts in summer and early fall, largely driven by extreme heat in California causing increased demand for air conditioning. (West Coast states have interconnected power grids, so Washington and Oregon could be affected by California’s demand.)

All from a whopping 1.5F increase in global temperatures since 1850? It couldn’t have anything to do with replacing reliable, dependable, affordable energy sources with non-reliable, non-dependable, expensive ones, could it?

Although the researchers predicted only brief blackouts, they noted that a growing imbalance between supply and demand for power during heat waves would cause prices to spike up to California’s legal cap of $1,000 per megawatt hour. “When prices go up to $1,000 per megawatt hour, that’s the grid ringing the alarm bell,” Kern said.

These would be the rolling brownouts and blackouts due to a lack of reliable energy that are happening right now, right? We can solve this if you give your freedom, liberty, consumer choice, and money to government, though.