By Kennedy Maize The evidence has become clear. The Department of Energy’s orders to elderly, uneconomic coal-fired power plants to keep running is about politics, not grid reliability. It’s also a familiar case of hubris, where alleged “conservatives” get to Washington and decide they know more than locals about local conditions. Consider TransAlta’s Centralia plant … More DOE’s phony, costly coal plant policy exposed
By Kennedy Maize The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday (Mar. 19) spent a good portion of its monthly meeting discussing a notational order issued six days before, unanimously blessing a plan by the Southwest Power Pool to combine new generation requests and grid interconnection reviews. Chairman Laura Swett said she hoped the SPP plan would … More FERC green lights SPP consolidated planning plan
By Kennedy Maize President Donald Trump’s long list of offshore wind defeats is growing. Vineyard Wind 1 on March 13 installed the final of 62 13-MW wind turbines some 15 miles off of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. It is the first major offshore wind project to come to completion in the Trump administration. Trump has long … More Offshore wind projects advance, despite Trump
By Kennedy Maize Spring is arriving in the Rocky Mountains as a two-decade drought tightens its grip, making the long-running regional impasse over the vital Colorado River system even more difficult to manage. Snow largely avoided the Rockies this winter, depriving the river of needed water for the coming year, as the current deal under … More As Spring arrives, Colorado River prospects dim
By Kennedy Maize Fifteen years ago, March 11, 2011, a civilian nuclear power catastrophe began in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture on the country’s east coast. It began early in the afternoon after a powerful offshore earthquake produced a tsunami sweeping westward and toward the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, located above the beach between the villages … More Fukushima, then and now
By Kennedy Maize National non-profit environmental law firm Earthjustice has sued the Interior Department over approval of an expansion of a notorious Montana underground coal mine. The suit this month (Mar. 3) in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, Billings Division, charges that Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) in … More Greens sue DOI over Montana coal mine expansion
By Kennedy Maize The oil market has trumped President Trump’s repeated mantra that the key to national energy policy is “drill, baby, drill.” The Interior Department’s latest offering of drilling rights in oil-rich Alaska has failed, joining other flawed off-shore sales and failed on-shore coal sales in the Rocky Mountain west. DOI’s Bureau of Ocean … More Trump administration’s latest failed energy lease sale
By Kennedy Maize Private equity giant BlackRock and Swedish private equity firm EQT have assembled a consortium to buy AES Corp. (NYSE:AES) for $33..4 billion — $15/share in cash — taking the Arlington, Va., energy firm private. The price represents a 40% premium over the AES share price as of July 2025, when rumors of … More BlackRock and EQT buying iconic AES for $33.4 billion
By Kennedy Maize There’s a new leader in the nuclear power plant cost overrun derby, and it isn’t even in the clubhouse yet. Britain’s Hinkley Point C — being built in Somerset by France’s government-owned EDF — is now going to cost at least £49 billion ($65 billion) if it goes into service in 2030 … More Move over, Vogtle, and Olkiluoto too. Hinkley Point C is leading the nuclear news.
By Kennedy Maize In mid-February (Feb. 13) Texas giant engineering and construction company Fluor Corp. (NYSE:FLR) began implementing a financial plan it had long telegraphed: unloading its major investment in Oregon-based NuScale (NYSE:SMR), the most mature of the myriad wannabe developers of new, smaller U.S. nuclear power plants. As Nuscale’s largest shareholder, Fluor sold 71 … More A new start for NuScale?