By Kennedy Maize Donald Trump’s voluntary war on oil-rich Iran is having what the fossilized gang in Washington never anticipated: a global surge in renewable energy, including in the U.S. The impact of the war on oil supplies and prices has produced a dramatic shift to wind and solar that may be permanent. Energy analyst … More Iran war supercharges worldwide renewables
By Kennedy Maize The PJM Interconnection, the oldest and largest U.S. independent electric transmission system operator, on Wednesday (May 6) announced it has launched an effort to reform its troubled and controversial competitive energy capacity market. The announcement came just five days after PJM named insider David Mills its new president and chief executive officer. … More PJM launches capacity market reform process
By Henry Sokolski Last week, a month-long review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) began at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), a U.S.-funded service that reaches more than one million viewers in the Middle East, asked me whether the NPT keeps nuclear weapons from spreading. For more … More Guest Commentary: Can the NPT keep nuclear weapons from spreading?
By Kennedy Maize In a largely unnoticed move last month (April 20) President Trump issued five separate but intimately connected “presidential determinations” under the terms of the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) essentially claiming broad control over the entire U.S. energy economy. In the announcements, Trump also cited his January 20, 2025 Executive Order 14156 … More Power grab: Trump asserts control over all U.S. energy
By Kennedy Maize The most mature U.S. small modular nuclear reactor vendor — NuScale Power — and a politically connected firm planning to build perhaps the largest reactor project in the U.S. to power an enormous Texas data center — Fermi America — have both suffered recent, major, possibly existential blows. NuScale and Fermi, both … More Trouble bubbles up for NuScale and Fermi America
By Kennedy Maize The Trump administration’s Interior Department April 17 took steps to add and redistribute water in the drought-stricken Colorado River system, largely aimed at protecting hydro-electric generation from Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Meade behind Hoover Dam. Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation is ordering a major withdrawal of water from … More Interior orders a short-term Colorado River fix
By Kennedy Maize A group of nine Midwestern and Southern electric utilities, facing the prospect of demand for increased high-voltage transmission, are asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (EL-26-58-000) to render a key provision of long-standing commission Order 1000 — competition in new electric transmission projects — a dead letter. Calling themselves the “grid acceleration … More Transmission competition challenge faces FERC
By Kennedy Maize Gen. Arbitrary and Dr. Capricious have again derailed the Trump administration’s declared war against renewable energy. The day before April 22nd’s Earth Day anniversary, Judge Denise J. Casper, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, granted a preliminary injunction halting the Interior Department and Army Corps of … More Court hands Trump another loss on renewables
By Kennedy Maize Roll over, Tom Edison; tell Nikola the news: DC current is cruisin’ down the wires. You lose. Sometime this spring, the 339-mile, 400kV Champlain Hudson Power Express (HPE), a high voltage-direct current underground and underwater transmission line is set to begin delivering 1,250-MW of hydro and wind power from Quebec to New … More The AC v DC race is on again and DC is gaining
By Kennedy Maize As the federal government dithers over imposing conditions on the allocation of Colorado River water in seven states, Mexico, and multiple Indian tribes, the region is gripped by fear, uncertainty, doubt, and numerous homemade schemes ranging from the difficult to the preposterous. With a crisis that has been well understood for over … More The Perils of Pauline:* Colorado River crisis continues