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
By Kennedy Maize The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday (April 15) dropped a billion dollar hammer on a North Carolina firm for what the commission said was “energy efficiency fraud” in the PJM and MISO regional transmission organizations. The commission ordered American Efficient LLC to pay a $722 million fine and disgorge $410 million … More FERC hammers “Money-for-Nothing”
By Kennedy Maize Coal was once king of the U.S. electric generating hill, despite the many problems with the dusky diamonds. Nukes surged in the ‘70s, but never caught coal. Natural gas made a move in the 1980s, the period of the short-liven “gas bubble” when federal prices controls got lifted.The bubble deflated and coal … More Is dashing to gas the wrong move?
By Kennedy Maize The Trump administration so reveres what the president calls “America’s beautiful clean coal,” that it is proposing to weaken Environmental Protection Agency rules on disposing of the dirtiest part of what is an indubitably dirty fuel: the toxic ash coal leaves behind when burned. On April 9, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency … More EPA proposes a regulatory rollback on coal ash management
By Kennedy Maize Trump’s confusing “war of bad choice” against Iran has produced vivid unavoidable, anti-Trump display ads all across the country — EXXON: $4.20.9, Shell: $4.18.9, BP:$4.21.9; Crown:$4.09.9–and so it goes in terms of the political damage. But where the economic rubber actually hits the road is getting less overt attention: diesel fuel. University … More Trump’s war makes the case for electric big rigs
By Kennedy Maize Literally hot new environmental issues — water stress, heat islands, and type of power supply — are emerging as giant data centers proliferate. A new report from international consultancy Wood Mackenzie finds that water stress — the availability of water for cooling industrial processes — is “becoming a strategic constraint for energy … More New problems emerge as big data centers spread
By Henry Sokolski America and Israel want to prevent Tehran from getting a bomb. That’s why the Pentagon and Israel Defense Forces continue to target Tehran’s ability to make weapons uranium. Washington and Jerusalem claim they have obliterated Tehran’s uranium enrichment capability. Perhaps. But Iran has another pathway to a bomb. U.S. and Israeli leaders … More Guest Commentary: Blocking Iran’s other options: a plutonium bomb
By Kennedy Maize While fusion energy — yielding enormous amounts of heat from the violent combination of elements — has long been touted as the holy grail of energy future, that’s a dead end, according to a new article in the prestigious journal Nature Energy. “While nuclear fusion power is often hailed as a future … More Nature Energy on fusion energy’s financial fantasy
By Kennedy Maize Having failed in the courts to kill offshore wind by ordering them to stop work without justification, the White House has concocted a new approach: use taxpayer dollars to buy them out. When Trump’s Interior Department told five major offshore wind projects to lay down their tools, multiple federal district courts told … More Trump’s new anti wind gambit: none dare call it bribery?