Shedding Light on Electricity Blackouts, with Severin Borenstein

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Severin Borenstein, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, faculty director of the Energy Institute at Haas, and member of the Board of Governors of the California Independent System Operator. As the state of Texas struggles to keep the lights on due to extreme cold, Raimi asks Borenstein about lessons learned from California’s blackouts during the summer of 2020: the cause of the outages, the role of renewables, and market reforms that could help reduce the risk of blackouts in the future. Raimi and Borenstein also discuss how California’s experience can help Texas and other regional electricity networks plan for a future with more renewable power.

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