On April 17, less than a week before the Biden administration’s Earth Day climate summit April 22, which demonstrated return from the Trump administration’s distain for international cooperation in any forum and Trump’s skepticism about global warming, the U.S. and China produced a joint statement on their shared goals for reducing greenhouse gases. The word… More Earth Day warning: coal remains king in China, distorting climate response

Texas is an electrical (among other things) mess. The state features an independent grid operator that is purposefully, and stupidly, unconnected to the rest of the U.S. It has inadequate and unreliable generation, with little flexibility. It has retail rate regulators subservient to the utilities it regulates. Its ideology is autarky, which never works. Texas… More Analysis: Texas is a mess

While hydrogen has a lot going for it as a replacement for fossil fuels, its benefits are being oversold and its costs underplayed. That’s the view of Tom Baxter a senior lecturer in chemical engineering at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. Writing recently in The Conversation (the university is a founding partner of the UK publication),… More Beware the hydrogen hype machine?

Fusion power hopes spring eternal this time of year, but there’s plenty of reason to doubt. The periodic hype for fusion always seems to start in the spring, particularly when the U.S. federal budget season is in full bud. But endless energy from smashing hydrogen atoms together, promising unlimited clean and cheap electric power, so… More New “cherry blossom” claims of fusion breakthrough

Ohio’s FirstEnergy electric utility holding company has agreed to disgorge some $26 million it collected under legislation (HB 6) passed to rescue two of the company’s uneconomic power plants with more than a billion dollars in subsidies after it became clear the legislation passed as a result of a utility-led $60 million bribery scheme. Akron-based… More FirstEnergy to refund nuclear bailout charges as DeWine repeals most of HB 6