“This graph supports some of the claims made in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) study, which suggested that transmission and distribution, not generation, charges have increased electricity prices since 2020”.
This is classic decision based evidence making by the Berkeley lab. Increased transmission costs don’t just fall out of the sky, they are caused by widely diffused renewables which then require massive expansion of transmission.
Chicken lays egg.
So they built too much crap generation and couldn’t connect it all, then had to slow building of crap generation to focus on building transmission to connect said crap generation, then claim power costs are due to transmission costs not due to crap generation.
You really can’t hate these people enough, inveterate liars.
Same here in Alberta, the NDP got elected in 2014 and started implementing renewable crap and then claimed the transmission grid was in “all the wrong places” which then drove costs.
“I stabbed myself in the eye, we all stabbed ourselves in the eyes and for some reason our ambulance and hospital costs exploded, but don’t be an idiot and suggest stabbing ourselves in the eyes had anything to do with it”.
Sounds ridiculous right? But that is the argument.
We hates them all, precious.
Effing morons.
Actually the real problem is they think we are effing morons.
Case in point: Recent application in a general rate case, the justification for the increase right in the application said 1) new transmission projects and wind plants, and 2) net power costs. It was a very large rate increase and so naturally stinky debris hit the fan, or wind turbine in this case.
When this happened the utility clarified that natural gas costs and coal costs were actually the reason. Certain persons brought data showing that fuel costs could not explain the issue. The utility said such persons were ignorant, and then clarified their clarification to add that market purchases of power (a net power costs item) also contributed to the need for a rate increase.
In a more recent pleading the utility maintains that market purchases will lower power costs.
In short, the rationale simply shifts without end. The utility is always hoping that people will not read the application and will not understand things like net power costs.
In other words, what we need are more, smaller generation plants where the power is needed.
If only there were something like that. Something like nuclear, but without the political hurdles, 20-year lead times, no foreseeable path to ever becoming cheaper than fossil fuels.
If only...
It's interesting. There is an entire new developing industry grouped under the label "advanced geothermal." Eavor started delivering power and heat from their first commercial plant last December and already has over 30 more orders secured; competitors Quaise, Fervo, and others are close behind. Yes, the first ones will cost more per kwh - like EVERY new technology does. However, the math and engineering are clear: these startups will almost certainly become cheaper than fossil fuels with more experience.
So, why haven't we heard about them? NYT - nothing. CNN - one vague fluff piece, nothing about Eavor. In fact, using several search engines reveal not a single major LSM outlet providing air time to Eavor's successful launch.
This seems odd. For a politically-motivated LSM claiming they want to "save the planet," why not cover something the industry experts all agree is likely the only path to clean, scalable, reliable, CHEAP power?
Why, it's almost as if they don't WANT anyone to know a real solution to the world's energy challenges is already at our doorstep. What could cau$se them to want to $uppre$$ this$?
For once let me agree with California’s separation of generation and transmission. If a private party had built this solar farm, they would have hidden behind their string of LLCs grabbed the insurance money and split. Since the utility owns it the ratepayers are on the hook, it will be rebuilt with the costs going to the ratepayers either directly or through increased insurance premiums.
20% is a pretty impressive capacity factor. I would have guessed 15% given the location.
The 25 year cost comparison should include at least one total replacement of panels
Geographically, my neighbor's PV system is similar to that of solar farms that got hit by the storm. This winter snow and ice didn't slide or melt off his panels for weeks. The same problem must of occurred at Cornell's on and off site solar farms earlier this winter-
More strong reporting from the Energy Bad Boys. It's the height of foolishness to make our most important energy network dependent on the weather. We need weather-resilient energy and power systems, not energy dependent ones. And in particular, we energy and power systems that won't get whisked away by severe weather.
Great piece! The cost/benefit ratio = infinity with this nonsense. Google map south central Chisago County, MN - they covered our most fertile farmlands with this toxic waste. By design.
The only toxic waste covering farmlands are the poisonous pesticides and fertilizers that make farmland ecological dead zones contributing to insect population collapse. Around 1/3 of corn grown in the US is subsidized for biodiesel - which covers only a small percent of our energy needs. If we replaced that space with solar, we could cover nearly 100% of our energy needs.
Comstock Metals will pay them salvage value for the refuse if they deliver it to their brand new Zero Landfill Solar Panel Recycling Facility in Silver Springs, Nevada.
By the time they pay the clean up and hauling costs they might break even on the site clean up.
Insurance Premiums on these facilities keep going up as these sites seem to have similar attractive power for Tornadoes as Trailer Parks.
You raise some very good points in this article about rates and the value of existing coal resources.
Our rates have increased substantially in the past 10 years. Unlike most utilities, we can argue that this was partially in response to sustained net load growth (~1.5% per year until recently). A larger driver of rate increases was likely the substantial investment in renewable resources to meet the desires of a few very vocal customers as opposed to aligning with the cost, reliability, and clean mission statement.
One perspective is that the key value proposition that utilities are offering to data center customers is the reliability backstop provided by the existing grid (combination of generation and transmission resources). Data center customers certainly have the funding and can buy the expertise to put together a portfolio of generation resources. It would be more expensive and time consuming to build out the transmission to connect multiple resources to a load that is not co-located. What would be massively expensive for them to duplicate is reliability backstop needed if their gas turbines were in outage or their renewables did not produce. Utilities can provide this service to them, based upon the substantial investment of the historical customer base. At least in our case, coal remains a key foundation of our grid and our ability to provide this reliability backstop.
The outlook for our coal resources has turned 180 degrees in the past 12 months. This is not driven by a change in the projected cost (~$60/MWH), but rather two other factors. The need for capacity to meet data center demand and that of current, committed customers has exploded. In addition, the close coal at all cost mentality has finally been reduced allowing for the independent assessment of the coal resources.
Coal and gas were also handy to have in the winter storms in the eastern part of our country. The huge footprint of solar farms makes them all the more vulnerable to wind and hail damage.
We're told the climate and weather are changing and are "unstable" (as if weather has even been stable!), so how is building an electricity system dependent on the weather a smart thing to do? 🧐
Sorry, guys, but I find what seems to be your argument unconvincing despite my personal preference for coal over solar. You asked to know why. The main thing is that it is dangerous to generalize from one case. Just because one house burned down does not mean they all should have sprinklers. And insurance is a central part of the story. It's too bad you were unable to get data on that.
Tornadoes get headlines and produce tragedy, but they are sparse. So how about analyzing the statistics? What are the expected and observed rates of destruction, by extreme weather, of solar arrays across a relevant geographical area? And how does this impact expected costs?
While I agree with your sentiment about critically analyzing the situation, these two solar farms were the first two and only two constructed in NIPSCO. So for this generating region there is a 100% observed rate of large-scale solar farms being destroyed by tornados.
Interesting point. Personally my question would be around a less extreme weather related case: what happens on a “carbon free” grid during the coldest and cloudiest months of the year, when the solar panels get covered in snow? What about an especially snowy year when the snow doesn’t melt for several months? Do we build systems to be 100x bigger for these low energy edge cases that will absolutely happen? Do we deploy an army to clear snow from thousands of acres of panels one snowstorm after another? Or do we maintain a second fossil fuel grid as a backup, and have effectively two grids?
The other thing is Midwest roads have a hard time making it a quarter century under snow and ice contraction and expansion. It’s hard for me to believe that high end delicate electronics would fare better. It’s the accounting tricks, like how long they’ll actually last, and under which conditions they’ll function, that make the math work out to sell these projects in the first place.
You have to expand that to include wildfires, hail storms/thunder storms, floods, sand storms, earthquakes and CMEs(coronal mass ejection). And some of those events may effect a very wide area, even if infrequent, taking out an entire power grid is bad, very bad. The last thing you want in a natural disaster is to also have your grid severely damaged, that just amplifies the impact, and impairs recovery.
And then you have to start thinking about the resilience of the grid to military action, civil war, revolution, terrorism. Those fragile wind turbines and solar panels can be destroyed with a hunting rifle, EMPs, or a single RPG round could destroy an entire solar farm. The way our politicians are pissing off just about everybody on the planet with their endless war agenda, you'd be a fool to think that destruction won't find its way home.
"then you have to start thinking about the resilience of the grid to military action, civil war, revolution, terrorism." Excellent point. During the cold war, this was a key consideration.
You make a good point, but a traditional CCGT plant would have likely survived with nary a scratch. Solar farms are subject to a variety of natural disasters that would not affect traditional power plants.
We have had one solar plant destroyed by hail in a nearby Nebraska County recently and quite a number of applications for solar plants all over eastern Wyoming in an area that we know to be hail-alley. But what about wind damage without hail or even without a tornado?
Solar plants properly constructed will generally be anchored to the earth per design assumptions. However, on Monday there were wind gusts109 MPH in Cheyenne to the east of me, and 81 MPH here -- pretty unusual winds. What is a typical design based on? When a facility composed of air foils has the weakest of its elements damaged by wind and produces some flying debris, this tends to destroy a large part of the facility (look at the pattern of damage in the photo). It also spreads damage to neighboring residential, commercial or industrial areas. Because of their design and construction solar plants are practically meant to amplify local failure.
The weather risk solar panels are exposed to is much higher than other generating sources. In tornado or hurricane prone regions you basically have a field of wind sails waiting to be ripped up. Their area also increases the probability of damage relative to other sources.
It would be interesting if there was some global data on this but I’m unsure how applicable it would be due to drastic regional weather differences.
The solar power farm (also referred to as a solar park or solar facility) damaged by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica is the **Eight Rivers Solar Park** (also called Paradise Park Solar Farm or similar in reports), located in Paradise, Westmoreland Parish. This is Jamaica's largest solar project, with a capacity of 51.5 MWp (37 MW), owned by InterEnergy Group.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28, 2025, as a catastrophic Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 185 mph (295 km/h), causing widespread destruction, including to this facility.
Reports from mid-November 2025 (e.g., Jamaica Observer on November 18, 2025) confirm **catastrophic damage** to the site, with panels and structures heavily impacted by the extreme winds. The owners announced they were moving forward with a **reconstruction plan** to rebuild it "in a stronger, safer, and more resilient way" and bring it back online. An earlier announcement around November 12, 2025, also detailed a comprehensive reconstruction effort to restore generation capacity.
As of the most recent available information (up to early 2026), there are no public reports confirming full restoration or the facility being back online. Broader recovery updates focus on grid restoration (e.g., Jamaica Public Service progress), increased rooftop solar adoption post-storm for resilience, and solar initiatives in other areas (like UNDP-supported solar-powered cold storage for fishers in early March 2026). Power grid recovery has advanced significantly, with many areas reconnected months after the storm, but specific status updates on this large-scale solar farm appear limited in public sources.
- Videos and drone tours from late 2025 show extensive damage (e.g., crumpled panels).
- No recent confirmations (e.g., in March 2026 sources) indicate it has been fully restored yet.
- Rebuilding was stated as "immediate" in late 2025 announcements, but given the scale of damage and Jamaica's overall recovery timeline (full power restoration estimated up to six months in some areas), it may still be in progress.
And as a retired environmental professional I concur with your view of the environmental risk associated metals leaching from these broken panels. It won't be widespread, substantial and metals tend to affix to soils and aren't as mobile as chemical compounds (volatile organics, perfluoroalkyl substances, etc.).
Worry more about the PFAS in your dental floss or the BTEX vapors when filling up your car over a lifetime.
Now, as to the underfunded liabilities on the balance sheets of the spinning green crucifix and sun catcher developers and owners for the actual removal (whether any "remediation" is required or not), that's a real worry.
Great article but I am curious. I am extremely skeptical of all LCOE studies of IBR's, as they do not take into account intermittency, need for backup systems, and increased transmission costs and associated IBR hardware. See Idel's (2021) excellent work on this
By not taking into account these costs, people underestimate the true costs of solar and wind. When you did your LCOE on the solar destroyed solar plant, did you consider these issues. If not, the costs are way worse
EF1 is outside the parameters for wind turbine operation, too. Odds are that a tornado would only damage a few turbines out of a given wind farm, but if operated responsibly, _none_ of them in the affected area would provide useful electrical power during or immediately after the storm. Not a sane operational profile if one truly expected an "increase of severe weather events" as a result of "climate change." Lemmings, anyone?
“This graph supports some of the claims made in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) study, which suggested that transmission and distribution, not generation, charges have increased electricity prices since 2020”.
This is classic decision based evidence making by the Berkeley lab. Increased transmission costs don’t just fall out of the sky, they are caused by widely diffused renewables which then require massive expansion of transmission.
Chicken lays egg.
So they built too much crap generation and couldn’t connect it all, then had to slow building of crap generation to focus on building transmission to connect said crap generation, then claim power costs are due to transmission costs not due to crap generation.
You really can’t hate these people enough, inveterate liars.
Same here in Alberta, the NDP got elected in 2014 and started implementing renewable crap and then claimed the transmission grid was in “all the wrong places” which then drove costs.
“I stabbed myself in the eye, we all stabbed ourselves in the eyes and for some reason our ambulance and hospital costs exploded, but don’t be an idiot and suggest stabbing ourselves in the eyes had anything to do with it”.
Sounds ridiculous right? But that is the argument.
We hates them all, precious.
Effing morons.
Actually the real problem is they think we are effing morons.
What you say is an excellent point.
Case in point: Recent application in a general rate case, the justification for the increase right in the application said 1) new transmission projects and wind plants, and 2) net power costs. It was a very large rate increase and so naturally stinky debris hit the fan, or wind turbine in this case.
When this happened the utility clarified that natural gas costs and coal costs were actually the reason. Certain persons brought data showing that fuel costs could not explain the issue. The utility said such persons were ignorant, and then clarified their clarification to add that market purchases of power (a net power costs item) also contributed to the need for a rate increase.
In a more recent pleading the utility maintains that market purchases will lower power costs.
In short, the rationale simply shifts without end. The utility is always hoping that people will not read the application and will not understand things like net power costs.
They will always try to support the narrative, need good data people to suss out the lies.
Lying with statistics is what the renewables peeps are all about
All unnecessary. See my adjacent reply.
In other words, what we need are more, smaller generation plants where the power is needed.
If only there were something like that. Something like nuclear, but without the political hurdles, 20-year lead times, no foreseeable path to ever becoming cheaper than fossil fuels.
If only...
It's interesting. There is an entire new developing industry grouped under the label "advanced geothermal." Eavor started delivering power and heat from their first commercial plant last December and already has over 30 more orders secured; competitors Quaise, Fervo, and others are close behind. Yes, the first ones will cost more per kwh - like EVERY new technology does. However, the math and engineering are clear: these startups will almost certainly become cheaper than fossil fuels with more experience.
So, why haven't we heard about them? NYT - nothing. CNN - one vague fluff piece, nothing about Eavor. In fact, using several search engines reveal not a single major LSM outlet providing air time to Eavor's successful launch.
This seems odd. For a politically-motivated LSM claiming they want to "save the planet," why not cover something the industry experts all agree is likely the only path to clean, scalable, reliable, CHEAP power?
Why, it's almost as if they don't WANT anyone to know a real solution to the world's energy challenges is already at our doorstep. What could cau$se them to want to $uppre$$ this$?
Thank you EBBs, the image of the solar farm was very helpful - I now see what "levelized" means.
Badum Ching!
I see what you did there!
Excellent documentation on solar panel and coal fired electric generating stations.
My solar panel loving friends glow with happiness when they see their solar panels paying them top dollar for electricity they can't use.
These are educated people. Our education and "free press" systems have failed far beyond PRAVDA in the Soviet Union.
We will promote your Substack on our Substack, johnshanahan.substack.com.
For once let me agree with California’s separation of generation and transmission. If a private party had built this solar farm, they would have hidden behind their string of LLCs grabbed the insurance money and split. Since the utility owns it the ratepayers are on the hook, it will be rebuilt with the costs going to the ratepayers either directly or through increased insurance premiums.
20% is a pretty impressive capacity factor. I would have guessed 15% given the location.
The 25 year cost comparison should include at least one total replacement of panels
Geographically, my neighbor's PV system is similar to that of solar farms that got hit by the storm. This winter snow and ice didn't slide or melt off his panels for weeks. The same problem must of occurred at Cornell's on and off site solar farms earlier this winter-
https://portal.emcs.cornell.edu/d/kkXN7E6Zk/solar-production?orgId=2&from=1768588044601&to=1770732704829
More strong reporting from the Energy Bad Boys. It's the height of foolishness to make our most important energy network dependent on the weather. We need weather-resilient energy and power systems, not energy dependent ones. And in particular, we energy and power systems that won't get whisked away by severe weather.
Slight error...this solar farm is adjacent to Wheatfield, Indiana. There is no Wheaton, IN.
The custom map is very helpful...thanks.
Thanks. I’ll fix that this afternoon.
Great piece! The cost/benefit ratio = infinity with this nonsense. Google map south central Chisago County, MN - they covered our most fertile farmlands with this toxic waste. By design.
The only toxic waste covering farmlands are the poisonous pesticides and fertilizers that make farmland ecological dead zones contributing to insect population collapse. Around 1/3 of corn grown in the US is subsidized for biodiesel - which covers only a small percent of our energy needs. If we replaced that space with solar, we could cover nearly 100% of our energy needs.
Comstock Metals will pay them salvage value for the refuse if they deliver it to their brand new Zero Landfill Solar Panel Recycling Facility in Silver Springs, Nevada.
By the time they pay the clean up and hauling costs they might break even on the site clean up.
Insurance Premiums on these facilities keep going up as these sites seem to have similar attractive power for Tornadoes as Trailer Parks.
You raise some very good points in this article about rates and the value of existing coal resources.
Our rates have increased substantially in the past 10 years. Unlike most utilities, we can argue that this was partially in response to sustained net load growth (~1.5% per year until recently). A larger driver of rate increases was likely the substantial investment in renewable resources to meet the desires of a few very vocal customers as opposed to aligning with the cost, reliability, and clean mission statement.
One perspective is that the key value proposition that utilities are offering to data center customers is the reliability backstop provided by the existing grid (combination of generation and transmission resources). Data center customers certainly have the funding and can buy the expertise to put together a portfolio of generation resources. It would be more expensive and time consuming to build out the transmission to connect multiple resources to a load that is not co-located. What would be massively expensive for them to duplicate is reliability backstop needed if their gas turbines were in outage or their renewables did not produce. Utilities can provide this service to them, based upon the substantial investment of the historical customer base. At least in our case, coal remains a key foundation of our grid and our ability to provide this reliability backstop.
The outlook for our coal resources has turned 180 degrees in the past 12 months. This is not driven by a change in the projected cost (~$60/MWH), but rather two other factors. The need for capacity to meet data center demand and that of current, committed customers has exploded. In addition, the close coal at all cost mentality has finally been reduced allowing for the independent assessment of the coal resources.
Coal and gas were also handy to have in the winter storms in the eastern part of our country. The huge footprint of solar farms makes them all the more vulnerable to wind and hail damage.
We're told the climate and weather are changing and are "unstable" (as if weather has even been stable!), so how is building an electricity system dependent on the weather a smart thing to do? 🧐
It's not.
Sorry, guys, but I find what seems to be your argument unconvincing despite my personal preference for coal over solar. You asked to know why. The main thing is that it is dangerous to generalize from one case. Just because one house burned down does not mean they all should have sprinklers. And insurance is a central part of the story. It's too bad you were unable to get data on that.
Tornadoes get headlines and produce tragedy, but they are sparse. So how about analyzing the statistics? What are the expected and observed rates of destruction, by extreme weather, of solar arrays across a relevant geographical area? And how does this impact expected costs?
While I agree with your sentiment about critically analyzing the situation, these two solar farms were the first two and only two constructed in NIPSCO. So for this generating region there is a 100% observed rate of large-scale solar farms being destroyed by tornados.
Interesting point. Personally my question would be around a less extreme weather related case: what happens on a “carbon free” grid during the coldest and cloudiest months of the year, when the solar panels get covered in snow? What about an especially snowy year when the snow doesn’t melt for several months? Do we build systems to be 100x bigger for these low energy edge cases that will absolutely happen? Do we deploy an army to clear snow from thousands of acres of panels one snowstorm after another? Or do we maintain a second fossil fuel grid as a backup, and have effectively two grids?
The other thing is Midwest roads have a hard time making it a quarter century under snow and ice contraction and expansion. It’s hard for me to believe that high end delicate electronics would fare better. It’s the accounting tricks, like how long they’ll actually last, and under which conditions they’ll function, that make the math work out to sell these projects in the first place.
You have to expand that to include wildfires, hail storms/thunder storms, floods, sand storms, earthquakes and CMEs(coronal mass ejection). And some of those events may effect a very wide area, even if infrequent, taking out an entire power grid is bad, very bad. The last thing you want in a natural disaster is to also have your grid severely damaged, that just amplifies the impact, and impairs recovery.
And then you have to start thinking about the resilience of the grid to military action, civil war, revolution, terrorism. Those fragile wind turbines and solar panels can be destroyed with a hunting rifle, EMPs, or a single RPG round could destroy an entire solar farm. The way our politicians are pissing off just about everybody on the planet with their endless war agenda, you'd be a fool to think that destruction won't find its way home.
"then you have to start thinking about the resilience of the grid to military action, civil war, revolution, terrorism." Excellent point. During the cold war, this was a key consideration.
Tornados are not the only issue. Hail destroyed a solar farm near Houston. Hail is not a rare event in many locations.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=solar+plant+destroyed+by+hail&mid=8996D2C11338FB56F6798996D2C11338FB56F679&FORM=VIRE
You make a good point, but a traditional CCGT plant would have likely survived with nary a scratch. Solar farms are subject to a variety of natural disasters that would not affect traditional power plants.
We have had one solar plant destroyed by hail in a nearby Nebraska County recently and quite a number of applications for solar plants all over eastern Wyoming in an area that we know to be hail-alley. But what about wind damage without hail or even without a tornado?
Solar plants properly constructed will generally be anchored to the earth per design assumptions. However, on Monday there were wind gusts109 MPH in Cheyenne to the east of me, and 81 MPH here -- pretty unusual winds. What is a typical design based on? When a facility composed of air foils has the weakest of its elements damaged by wind and produces some flying debris, this tends to destroy a large part of the facility (look at the pattern of damage in the photo). It also spreads damage to neighboring residential, commercial or industrial areas. Because of their design and construction solar plants are practically meant to amplify local failure.
The weather risk solar panels are exposed to is much higher than other generating sources. In tornado or hurricane prone regions you basically have a field of wind sails waiting to be ripped up. Their area also increases the probability of damage relative to other sources.
It would be interesting if there was some global data on this but I’m unsure how applicable it would be due to drastic regional weather differences.
Meanwhile in Jamaica
(From Grok)
The solar power farm (also referred to as a solar park or solar facility) damaged by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica is the **Eight Rivers Solar Park** (also called Paradise Park Solar Farm or similar in reports), located in Paradise, Westmoreland Parish. This is Jamaica's largest solar project, with a capacity of 51.5 MWp (37 MW), owned by InterEnergy Group.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28, 2025, as a catastrophic Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 185 mph (295 km/h), causing widespread destruction, including to this facility.
Reports from mid-November 2025 (e.g., Jamaica Observer on November 18, 2025) confirm **catastrophic damage** to the site, with panels and structures heavily impacted by the extreme winds. The owners announced they were moving forward with a **reconstruction plan** to rebuild it "in a stronger, safer, and more resilient way" and bring it back online. An earlier announcement around November 12, 2025, also detailed a comprehensive reconstruction effort to restore generation capacity.
As of the most recent available information (up to early 2026), there are no public reports confirming full restoration or the facility being back online. Broader recovery updates focus on grid restoration (e.g., Jamaica Public Service progress), increased rooftop solar adoption post-storm for resilience, and solar initiatives in other areas (like UNDP-supported solar-powered cold storage for fishers in early March 2026). Power grid recovery has advanced significantly, with many areas reconnected months after the storm, but specific status updates on this large-scale solar farm appear limited in public sources.
- Videos and drone tours from late 2025 show extensive damage (e.g., crumpled panels).
- No recent confirmations (e.g., in March 2026 sources) indicate it has been fully restored yet.
- Rebuilding was stated as "immediate" in late 2025 announcements, but given the scale of damage and Jamaica's overall recovery timeline (full power restoration estimated up to six months in some areas), it may still be in progress.
https://johnshanahan.substack.com/p/solar-scattered-coal-still-standing
Great post, Boys.
And as a retired environmental professional I concur with your view of the environmental risk associated metals leaching from these broken panels. It won't be widespread, substantial and metals tend to affix to soils and aren't as mobile as chemical compounds (volatile organics, perfluoroalkyl substances, etc.).
Worry more about the PFAS in your dental floss or the BTEX vapors when filling up your car over a lifetime.
Now, as to the underfunded liabilities on the balance sheets of the spinning green crucifix and sun catcher developers and owners for the actual removal (whether any "remediation" is required or not), that's a real worry.
Great article but I am curious. I am extremely skeptical of all LCOE studies of IBR's, as they do not take into account intermittency, need for backup systems, and increased transmission costs and associated IBR hardware. See Idel's (2021) excellent work on this
https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1145/1145_fullpaper_20210326_222336.pdf
By not taking into account these costs, people underestimate the true costs of solar and wind. When you did your LCOE on the solar destroyed solar plant, did you consider these issues. If not, the costs are way worse
EF1 is outside the parameters for wind turbine operation, too. Odds are that a tornado would only damage a few turbines out of a given wind farm, but if operated responsibly, _none_ of them in the affected area would provide useful electrical power during or immediately after the storm. Not a sane operational profile if one truly expected an "increase of severe weather events" as a result of "climate change." Lemmings, anyone?