Weather & Science
Why Power Outages Do More Economic Damage Than We Think
Most estimates of losses from US blackouts don’t fully account for indirect and longer-term impacts, a new analysis finds.
Ice covers trees and power lines in east Nashville, Tennessee, on Jan. 26.
Photographer: Kate Dearman/BloombergThe day after a major winter storm swept across the US, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remained without electricity and the prospect of more outages loomed amid frigid temperatures. One early estimate suggested the storm could result in $24 billion in total economic losses.
But a new analysis by RMI, a clean energy nonprofit, suggests that the current methods for counting the damages from power outages mean we are likely undercounting its impact — and those of similar storms — by a significant margin.