Europe’s Dark, Windless Days Show Risk of Renewables Rollout (1)

Europe’s power prices soared to levels last seen during the energy crisis this week. Only it wasn’t a war or other geopolitical events that caused it, but the dark, windless weather that is all too common during winter.

The continent has rapidly expanded its capacity to generate wind and solar power, but still relies on costly hydrocarbons as a back up. For instance, while Germany gets more than 49 gigawatts of wind power on the gustiest days, only around 1% of that record was being generated on Wednesday, with expensive fossil fuels plugging the gap.

The “Dunkelflaute” phenomenon — known ...