A Depressed Growth Trajectory: The Wall Street Journal July Survey

Forecasters are downbeat relative April survey (Figure 1).  And about a third forecast negative Q/Q growth in 2022Q2, but the mean (and median) forecast is for positive growth, as shown in Figure 2 (though there being two consecutive quarters of negative growth are not central to determining whether NBER BCDC declares a recession). About a fifth of respondents predict at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth starting later in 2022-23.

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Texas: Peak Load Use and Renewables

In response to the post on the causes of the Winter 2021 energy debacle in Texas, reader Corev confidently asserts:

Solar can never supply the power needed during peak demand. Peak demand occurs as the Sun diminishes.

Always useful to look at actual data. Here is a picture of peak load use in Texas on June 13th, 2022:

Source: Fox7Austin.

Peak use was at 6pm CST.

Sunset in Houston on June 13th was 8:23pm CST.

Of course, the entire point of the post was how renewables (including wind) were mitigating, not exacerbating, the difficulties Texas was encountering in meeting demand. Renewables includes wind, and wind accounts the great bulk of renewables energy production in Texas.

This is not to say that there are no problems with reliance on renewables; as pointed out in the Dallas Fed article, greater ability to transmit electricity (i.e., making the electricity generation more tradable, in essence) and greater battery storage capacity (which is coming) are going to be essential to meeting greater and more variable demand as climate change continues.

In the meantime, keep a watch out for utter failures of fact peddled by purveyors of disinformation.