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The ongoing energy transition, including the rapid electrification of energy services, reinforces the importance of secure and reliable electricity infrastructure. Electricity as a critical energy carrier cuts across sectoral boundaries, including but not limited to public health, national security, education, and transportation. Electricity markets treat electricity as a commodity bought and sold in the different restructured markets of the United States and are a critical feature of power systems shaping the energy transition. However, current electricity market developments primarily rely on techno-economic indicators and fall short of incorporating ethical considerations to spur energy transition towards 100% renewable electricity as end-use energy. Even though electricity markets are designed based on the assumption that they are socially valuable, they essentially go unmeasured based on social and ethical parameters and are largely measured using technical and economic tools and criteria. These inadequacies in the development of electricity markets fail to provide energy and other allied services, particularly during and in the aftermath of a disaster, to the people who need them the most. This paper aims to provide an analytical framework using the foundational approach of energy justice for looking at the electricity market development. The paper utilizes the case of the Texas electricity market and its role in dealing with the electricity crisis in Texas during the winter storm of 2021 from the critical lens of energy justice. The paper shows that using the foundational approach of energy justice, the electricity market can be designed more ethically by considering electricity as means rather than only a market commodity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Replacing legacy high carbon technologies (LHCTs) with new low carbon technologies (NLCTs), particularly NLCTs featuring variable renewable resources, can disproportionally influence the costs associated with maintaining a reliable and competent grid system. Traditional cost metrics and publicly available tools that make use of these metrics fail to capture the total systems cost (TSC) implications of such changes, highlighting the need for a tool that will capture these implications. This paper presents the results of a tool developed to estimate the System Cost of Replacement Energy (SCoRE) when NLCTs replace LHCTs in an operating region. The SCoRE estimates potential changes in the TSC resulting from the replacement. The SCoRE tool is applied to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) operating region. LHCTs, namely coal- and natural gas-fired power plants are replaced by NLCTs including solar photovoltaics and wind, with and without energy storage, and coal and natural gas power plants equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS). The results showcase the TSC implications of different replacement scenarios, which for ERCOT include larger increases in the TSC if LHCTs are replaced with wind and solar, in lieu of natural gas power plants equipped with CCS, for all decarbonization targets considered. • Technology transformations to achieve decarbonization will impact system costs. • SCoRE tool estimates system costs implications of LHCT being replaced with NLCT. • Wind and NGCC + CCS is the least cost pathway for 90% decarbonization in ERCOT. • Renewable energy curtailment appears cheaper than co-locating it with energy storage. • Solar PV + Battery storage become impractical at >70% decarbonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]