资源不足：为什么保持灯亮的关键因素变得越来越难（英）

Issue Brief 26-01 byJenya Kahn-LangandMolly Robertson— February 2026 1.What is resource adequacy,and how does it relate to Electric power is an essential resource for households,businesses, and economies, from keeping lights and lifesupport machines on to powering water conveyanceand transportation networks. When there is not enough Avoiding power outages and ensuring householdsand businesses have access to sufficient electricity One prime example is the electricity shortage event thatoccurred in Texas in February 2021. Winter storm Uricaused 246 deaths according to official counts (DSHS2021), primarily due to power outages, with one estimateputting the death toll over 800 (Weber and Buchele2022; FERC/NERC 2023). The Federal Reserve Bank of •Resource adequacyrefers to ensuring thatthe power system has enough supply to meetdemand at all times and avoid an electricityshortage. Resource adequacy is affected by theamount of electricity demanded, the availability Power outages resulting from extreme events, likethe ones in Texas, are becoming more frequent andsevere. The traditional methods for ensuring sufficientpower supply and incentivizing new investment werenot designed for the range of innovation in electric •Operational reliabilityrefers to how the grid ismanaged. This includes continuous monitoring andadjustment to ensure that electricity supply and •Delivery infrastructure reliabilityrefersto physical threats to the transmission anddistribution grid that brings power to householdsand businesses. There are millions of miles of This issue brief offers a primer for policymakersconsidering reforms to ensure sufficient power supply(“resource adequacy”). While resource adequacy isonly one dimension of electric reliability, we focus on itbecause the complex economic fundamentals that have While all three components of reliability are important,this issue brief focuses on resource adequacy because itis a particularly complex economic and policy challenge, 2.What is the government’s rolein resource adequacy? 1.Electricity is expensive to store(even thoughstorage costs have been decreasing). While toiletpaper suppliers can stock extra product in awarehouse to withstand a demand shock or tosmooth demand seasonality while maintaining Whether we need forward-looking investment inresource adequacy and whether the governmentneeds to intervene to ensure resource adequacy arehighly debated topics among experts. While most ofthe organized electricity markets in the United Statesinclude some forward-looking regulatory interventionto ensure resource adequacy, such as centralizedinvestment planning or forward incentive payments, the 2.It takes a long time to site, build, andinterconnect new electric generators. Construction alone takes two years for renewablegenerators, four years for thermal generators, andfive years for nuclear generators, on average (IEA2019; Thurner et al. 2014), and many timelinesare getting longer due to supply chain issues(Anderson 2025). Acquiring necessary state andfederal permits to build and receiving grid operatorapproval to connect to the grid (“interconnect”)can take years. In 2023, the median time betweenwhen a generator first requested to interconnect 2.1.The Energy-Only Vision For many goods and services, the good or serviceitself is the only product. Consider the market for toiletpaper. There are toilet paper producers, and there areconsumers who want to buy toilet paper. A consumerwho buys toilet paper typically does not also buy theassurance that there will be toilet paper available to buyin the future. Instead, if demand is high, prices shouldincrease and attract new toilet paper producers into themarket. This approach is the energy-only market vision: 2.3.Why Explicit Investment in Resource Even with capacity constraints, shortages should notoccur in a well-functioning market. Instead, as illustratedin Figure 2, high demand would simply lead to anespecially high price, and only buyers willing to pay thatprice would get electricity. Over time, high prices may 2.2.Electricity Has Challenging Physical buyers looking to reduce cost uncertainty could alsohedge high prices through long-term contracting withindividual producers or trading in financial markets. To understand the shortcomings of an energy-onlymarket, it may help to first understand two challenging physical features of electricity. However, there are imperfections and regulations inelectricity markets (“distortions”) that interact adversely 1.Many electricity consumers, such as householdsand businesses, purchase electricity from areseller, such as a utility, andpay retail prices thatdeviate from wholesale prices(“imperfect pass-through”). For example, regulators often preferretail rates that are more stable than wholesale 2.Many retail consumers do not fully pay attentionto the prices they pay(Ito 2014; Kahn-Lang 2023). 3.Price capsin wholesale electricity markets are These factors affect how responsi