Among the many risks surrounding long-term investments in power plants, resource risk is one of the most difficult to mitigate and is also a risk that manifests differently for renewable and natural gas-fired generation.

The goal of this work is to evaluate how a subset of wind and solar energy’s health and environmental benefits have evolved from 2007 through 2015 both in absolute terms as well as on a dollar-benefit per kWh basis.

The first objective of the presentation was to summarize select recent analyses of the retail rate impacts of renewable electricity.

Editor’s note: The following Abstract and Executive Summary come from a report authored by the Lawrence Berleley National Laboratory, titled Assessing changes in the reliability of the U.S. electric power system. Abstract Recent catastrophic weather events, existing and prospective federal and state policies, and growing investments in smart grid technologies have drawn renewed attention to…

Editor’s note: This executive summary, from the paper Revisiting the long term hedge value of wind power in an era of low natural gas prices, is authored by Mark Bolinger at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Download the full copy here: http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-6103e.pdf Expanding production of the United States’ vast shale gas reserves in recent years…