Pushing geothermal electric production, the Biden administration is limiting the scope of the nation’s key environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), in environmental impacts studies for these projects on federal land. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management on Monday (April 15) announced it was granting two “categorical exclusions” from the list of… More Biden BLM streamlines geothermal permits

It’s been some 30 years since a volcanic mountain on federal land in Nevada’s desert first surfaced as a likely site for disposing of the spent fuel from 100 nuclear plants. It’s been a dozen years since the federal government essentially abandoned the site after spending billions of dollars on it. Is Yucca Mountain coming… More Back to the future for Yucca Mountain?

When it comes to overall U.S. energy trends, this year and next will look much like 2023, according to the Energy Information Agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook, released last week (April 9). According to the Department of Energy’s statistical arm, worldwide crude oil prices, which averaged $82 per barrel in 2023, will rise slightly to $89… More EIA’s ho-hum 2024-2025 energy forecast

The congested queue for grid interconnection continues to grow, according to a new study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. New generation and storage capacity trying to connect to the U.S. grid in 2023 hit nearly 2,600 GW. The difficulty in connecting to the grid is a major impediment to the transition from the legacy fossil-fuel… More Grid interconnection queue gets longer and longer

Utah. Gov. Spencer Cox last month (Mar. 21) signed legislation to keep the giant coal-fired Intermountain Power Plant operating in the western part of the Beehive State. The Intermountain Power Authority, the public power system that owns the 1,900-MW, two-unit generator, plans to shut it down next year. The legislation may run afoul of federal… More The coal pile: Utah, Tennessee, Texas

The Department of Energy’s award of a $45 billion, 10-15-year contract for cleaning up the massive amount of noxious liquid radioactive and chemical wastes at the closed Hanford, Wash., nuclear weapons site, a residue of the World War II project to develop the atomic bomb, is back in court. The Tri-City Herald reports, “The losing… More Hanford nuke waste’s Jarndyce v Jarndyce*

In a case that could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans late last month (Mar. 27) extended its August, 2023 ban of a Texas above-ground spent nuclear fuel storage facility to nearby New Mexico, where Holtec International also has a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license for… More Court that nixed Texas nuke waste license kills New Mexico site

New England’s final coal-fired power plant is scheduled to shut down by June 2028 in an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and after a long-running dispute with New Hampshire environmentalists. Granite Shore Power, which operates peaking and intermittent power generation in the ISO-New England regional power grid, announced last week (Mar. 27) that… More New England goes coal free

A federal judge in Washington last month (Mar. 22) put on hold a 2022 Biden administration giant oil and gas lease sale covering some 128,000 acres of federal land, mostly in Wyoming. The sale consisted of federal acreage in six parcels: Wyoming, 119,564 acres; Montana and the Dakotas, 3,406 acres; Nevada, 2,560 acres; Colorado, 2,444… More Judge halts BLM Wyoming oil and gas lease sale

Have investor-owned electric utilities outlived their usefulness? Many in the public power sector have long answered a rousing “Yes,” but the idea has long been anathema outside the world of munis and co-ops. Now two veteran economic analysts who have long studied the electric system are suggesting that private-sector electric companies may be large, clumsy,… More Are investor-owned electric utilities a mistake?