PennEnergy’s Report on Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)

I’m on the email distribution list for PennEnergy’s reports on the energy industry as a whole, and, while I don’t buy the reports, I like to read the free summaries.  Linked above is an interesting one on the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) – a subject we try to cover often here.  I’m sure the full report provides a great deal of granularity about the various factors that are responsible for driving the prices of electricity: government policies, capital, fuel, O&M, and air emission control costs for coal and gas plants.

Explicit here are the costs that government imposes to deal with the so-called “externalities” of the use of fossil fuel, e.g., the damage to human health and the natural environment, both of which are still largely ignored.  But I predict that this will not remain the case forever, as the world’s people continue to catch onto the enormous harm associated with our current recklessness and gross negligence in terms of protecting our planet and the life forms on it.