For electricity, the price is wrong

Electricity from renewables may be cheaper, yet it’s still more expensive.

This column is for Callaway Climate Insights subscribers only, but it’s OK to share once in a while. Was it shared with you? Please subscribe.

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — There’s one urgent question that, perhaps more than any other, encapsulates the failures of climate finance over the past decade: Why, if it’s cheaper to produce electricity from renewable sources, are utilities still investing in new fossil fuel projects?

It’s been a decade since the cost of producing electricity from solar and wind became lower than from fossil fuels. Yet the number of new coal plants worldwide grew by 44% just last year alone, when measured by megawatts of production capacity.