Energy Disasters Look Different Now

This week I learned about a wind farm shutting down because a portion of the blade fell off. And it made me realize how different and minimal our future “energy disasters” will be versus our existing carbon-based energy disasters.

Here are the Old Disasters:

Tankers flipping over in the Caribbean. Pipeline spills. Oil rigs blowing up.

And Here are New Disasters

Wind blade fell off. Solar Inverter fire at utility farm. EV car fires.

Yes, EV fires are scary get some local press. And yes, a derecho or tornado may take out parts of a wind farm.

But the fact is that highly decentralized, lower cost assets make for less dramatic downside events. And less volatile commodity extraction, operating and transportation conditions make for lower impact disasters.

Reading the news about how parts of a wind blade fell off isn’t great. But if that system error is the new type of our new energy “disaster” then we are going to be alright. In addition to more isolated impact, our more distributed system has far greater redundancy than our legacy energy infrastructure.

How it Started vs How it Ended