By Kennedy Maize An administrative law judge for the Michigan Public Service Committee (MPSC) has advised the regulators to kill a plan by Consumers Energy to essentially give away 13 small, elderly hydropower projects to a Maryland based private equity firm, in return buying power from the dams at above-market rates. The purpose of the … More Michigan utility’s hydro give-away runs into trouble

By Kennedy Maize The  U.S. Department of Energy’s 90-day orders to keep coal-fired generating plants running “have been used almost exclusively to prevent the retirement of aging, uneconomic coal units—some of them currently inoperable—by the electric utilities that own them. Yet the plant owners, state regulators, and power grid operators all refute the DOE’s characterizations … More IEEFA challenges DOE’s deceptive, destructive coal plant orders

By Kennedy Maize The same day (June 4) the Trump administration rolled out a billion dollar coal subsidy program, the Department of Energy announced another victim in its program to prevent any U.S. coal-fired power plants from closing. The administration is implementing an unstated, but clear in the application, policy of making sure no U.S. … More DOE orders another uneconomic coal plant to keep running

By Kennedy Maize Warrior Run Generating Station is a 26-year-old, modest 200-MW bituminous coal-fired cogeneration power plant, using modern fluidized bed combustion technology, mothballed in western Maryland, near the picturesque 20,000 population city of Cumberland in the Allegheny Mountains. The plant is also near the historic coal fields of southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern West Virginia. … More Trump administration throws big money at coal, hoping for a revival

By Kennedy Maize Remember fusion? When it comes to the always touted, never delivered promise of unlimited amounts of energy from smashing atoms together, spring turning to summer produces optimistic proclamations of the advent of fusion energy that appear to wither and die when the autumn equinox arrives. How far away is the practical application … More Fusion and confusion with the perhaps-for-never fuel

By Kennedy Maize The Department of Energy’s long standing cleanup of its legacy nuclear weapons program is short staffed…and it shows. That’s a finding from the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency. According to a GAO report last month (May 19), DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), which is responsible for cleaning up the … More GAO: DOE’s weapons program cleanup faces deliberate short staffing

By Henry Sokolski With his declaration May 12th that Iran could enrich uranium after a moratorium, President Trump opened up a nuclear Pandora’s box. Whether he seals the deal to take possession of all of Iran’s uranium or fails to reach any nuclear understanding with Tehran at all, his willingness to allow Iran eventually to … More Guest commentary: Getting Iran’s right to enrich wrong

By Kennedy Maize Interior Secretary Doug Burgum can’t seem to figure out how to reconcile his offshore energy leasing policies with national security. Managing the linkage has left him looking less interested in substance than in bowing to Donald Trump’s often uninformed likes and dislikes.  First, at Trump’s order, he halted work on five developing … More Doug Burgum’s goofy-footed national security stance

By Kennedy Maize The Trump administration is pondering resurrecting a nuclear power application 54 years after an earlier, quite similar, attempt cratered. The Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) earlier this month (May 7) issued a “request for information” launching what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described as “an initiative to develop Small Modular Nuclear Reactors … More Administration looks back to the future on nuclear powered ships

By Kennedy Maize The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday (May 21) began a process to update its fast-track “blanket permitting process” under the Natural Gas that allows routine natural gas pipeline projects to proceed without full regulatory review. The commission issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) outlining how it plans to streamline and modernize … More FERC to accelerate routine gas pipeline project reviews