Episode #151: The Cost of Energy

This episode’s guest is Isaac Orr. Isaac is a Policy Fellow at the Center of the American Experiment. I came across his work by reading a recent white paper he co-authored titled “The High Cost of 100% Carbon-Free Electricity by 2040.”

A few weeks ago I put out a tweet with a chart from his report showing that the LOCE of new solar and wind project’s is significantly higher than the existing energy sources. The tweet ended up going viral and there were a lot of people in the replies with push back to the chart.

Instead of arguing on Twitter I decided to have the author of the report on the show.

This episode we talk about the methodologies of calculating the levelized cost of energy, and how there are various ways to distort the results. We dive into the politics of energy sources what specifically what Isaac’s state Minnesota is proposing. Lastly, we look under the hood of how the value of energy is calculated and try to better understand the true cost of energy.