The public implications of private substitutes for electric grid reliability
Climate change events have, in recent years, placed increasing strain on public electrical grids in the United States. In response to this vulnerability, some consumers are turning to private alternatives to the electric utility, like generators and batteries. A new paper in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists studies who adopts these private alternatives and how adoption responds to grid failures. The paper also studies how public electric grid reliability may change due to this proliferation and how these changes will affect the wellbeing of all households.
In ...







