Beyond CATF's Biased Analysis: Why Firm Power Isn't The Full Answer - CleanTechnica

The article critiques a recent report by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) that argues for moving beyond Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) as the sole metric for evaluating energy technologies, emphasizing the need to account for system-level integration costs of intermittent renewables like solar and wind. While the article agrees that LCOE is incomplete—ignoring costs related to storage, flexibility, transmission, and capacity value—it contends that CATF’s favored alternatives, such as nuclear power, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), and carbon capture-equipped fossil plants, are presented with significant bias. These technologies, often labeled as ideal firm power sources by CATF, also have substantial integration challenges and costs that the report downplays or ignores. Specifically, nuclear power’s inherent inflexibility requires continuous operation at steady output to remain economically viable, necessitating costly supplementary flexibility services like pumped hydro storage to manage grid variability. Similarly, EGS depends on stable thermal reservoirs and high capacity factors, but its