Research Library

The author examines the various factors that contributed to the 2021 Texas electricity crisis, reflects on lessons learned from the event and provides recommendations to better prepare for extreme weather events and reduce the risk of widespread, long-duration power interruptions.

An emerging perspective in U.S. public discourse claims that a buildout of renewable electricity would exacerbate supply risks, mining intensity, and import dependence. This ScienceDirect article from fellow Jim Krane and graduate student Robert Idel contends the opposite is true, demonstrating how transitioning to renewables hugely reduces the materials, mining and political risk involved compared to coal.

Nonresident scholar Julie Cohn explores the history of the giant interconnecting machine that linked the majority of power users across the country from 1967 to 1975. Proceedings of the IEEE, Dec. 28, 2018.

The author reviews some of the regulatory, financial and planning challenges for electricity transmission. Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy symposium: http://bit.ly/2KMRUvf.

The authors conducted mobile phone surveys on energy supply, demand and quality in 12 sub-Saharan African countries, finding that current grid and off-grid electricity supply is inadequate to meet consumers' demands.

The authors examine ways in which disruptive technologies could potentially help improve power sector development in African countries. 

Mexico's electricity market has engaged in a deep reform process after decades of a state-owned, vertically integrated, noncompetitive closed industry. Using different modeling strategies, the authors of this paper analyze electricity transmission planning under the new industrial and institutional structure, which is characterized by a nodal pricing system and an independent system operator (ISO).