Catherine (Katherine) Blunt

speaker

106 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2022 last heard Sep 2022

Catherine (Katherine) Blunt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · Solving the U.S. Energy Crisis and Lowering Your Bills · 1 Aug 2022 podcast

You know, demand is expected to increase.

And, you know, I think that most people agree that, you know, even a recession could help ease demand a bit, but it will likely only be temporary.

A lot of this started a number of years ago with a greater use of fracking, which is a means of

tapping shale formations and releasing a lot of oil and gas.

And so there was a boom in this activity over the last decade that resulted in a lot of domestic production of oil and gas that helped keep prices low for some time.

But the problem was is that fracking didn't produce the types of returns that investors were expecting.

And so as a result, a lot of the companies that were once very engaged in this kind of activity are now constrained because investors are pretty reticent to lend more money to something that historically has been disappointing to

And so for that reason, these producers have had difficulty keeping up with the latest surge in demand for these resources, partly as a result of lockdowns lifting worldwide and the fact that Europe is really trying to reduce its reliance on Russian supplies.

And so we are we're doing more to export to help fill those gaps.

Not quickly is the short answer.

But the other challenge, as we were just discussing earlier, is that a lot of these companies are having difficulty attracting the necessary capital to make those investments because their returns to investors have historically been disappointing.

Well, it's certainly true that wind and solar power have become much, much less expensive in the last decade, largely because of economies of scale that have made production more efficient.

There's also been subsidies that have been really beneficial to the build out of these resources.

But there's a few challenges, and the challenges have been made worse in the last few months by, first of all, supply chain issues globally that have made it more difficult to procure turbines and solar panels needed to continue the build out or even accelerate it.

But also wind and solar resources are by nature intermittent in general to help replace power plants that can produce power around the clock, like a coal plant or gas fired power plant.

You need some fleet of large batteries to store the wind and solar power for use when production declines.

Right now, because of some of the challenges in speeding the build out of renewables, you are beginning to see some gaps emerge as older plants close.

And so the challenge here is really managing the pace

You know, Catherine, people are also feeling the effects of the energy crunch in their monthly electricity bills.

Yeah, absolutely.

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