Electricity cost dissections: do they reveal – or conceal?

There's more. Even if I'm right, this is a sort of static accounting of the costs of what's in place. What about the dynamic effects of the investment environment on costs not directly attributable (but indirectly so) to renewables? For example:

• Cost increases attributable to fossil fuels may reflect state policy decisions to ban development of gas resources and some closures of major fossil fuel generators.
• NEM bidding rules (aided and abetted by the RET) might give first call to renewables, thus driving up needed rates of cost recovery over smaller operating times for other sources.
• More generally – and beyond the 'shadow carbon price' implicit in the RET and its ilk, there is the broader, longer-term 'expected carbon price' that long term investors must allow for and which, because of uncertainty about its level and likely path over time, must attract a large uncertainty margin on top.
• Surely all of these should be sheeted home to renewables? If so, the renewables cost share jumps.

I think a lot more transparency in this area is needed.

More later!