A badly fractured Federal Energy Regulatory Commission failed to achieve a quorum yesterday, allowing a proposal by the Independent System Operator-New England to compensate coal and nuclear generators with millions in extra payments for having a three-day fuel supply on hand during a winter coal snap to go forward. While FERC has a sitting quorum … More FERC fails to come to the plate on ISO-NE winter subsidy filing

It’s been a troubling summer for nuclear construction projects in the U.S. and Western Europe, further diminishing the prospects for new projects. Starting in the U.S., Southern Co.’s two-unit Vogtle plant, long over budget and off schedule, could be unable to make its current commercial operation forecast of May 23, 2021 for the first unit, … More Vogtle, Olkiluoto, and Flamanville face further schedule delays

Ohio’s legislature Tuesday finally passed the controversial bill to subsidize FirstEnergy’s two Ohio nuclear plants (and two coal-fired plants, one in Indiana and the other in Ohio, operated by the Ohio Valley Electric Corp., jointly owned by several regional investor-owned utilities). The legislation, which Republican Gov. Mike DeWine quickly signed into law Tuesday afternoon, will … More Ohio passes nuclear bailout legislation

The on-again, off-again Ohio legisltive battle over a $150 million-per-year FirstEnergy nuclear bailout is off again, at least until August. The five-year-old legislation – House Bill 6 – often revised in the years since it was introduced and produced bipartisan contention between the state House and Senate, looked like it was headed to passage last … More FirstEnergy nuclear bailout stalls

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s monopoly investor-owned electric-and-gas distribution company, has flipped its middle finger at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. What’s next? This is a story both comic and tragic, as it displays goofy-footed behavior by the Trump administration’s Army Corps of Engineers, and remarkable arrogance by the utility company. It was … More Dominion Energy, Chutzpah, and the Skiffes Creek power line

Waste products from electric generation are a widespread problem: Nuclear waste, coal ash, solar waste. Solar waste? DEFG, a Washington-based think tank focused on electric customers, released a study this week focused on the growing problem of what to do with photovoltaic solar panels after they have reached the end of their usefulness. DEFG CEO … More Sunburn: What to do with spent solar cells?

Pardon my déjà vu, but an article in Monday’s Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is planning to move 20% of the Washington staff of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colo. The newspaper described the proposal as “part of its broader push to shift power away from Washington and shrink the size … More Perry Pendley redux

Do several years of disastrous utility events in California suggest that the standard state regulatory model across the nation is defective? Is it the wrong approach to focus on detailed inputs to utility actions, when the utility knows far more than the regulators can ever discern? Looking at the how the California Public Utilities Commission … More California’s lesson: A new approach to utility regulation?

Worldwide spending on renewable energy is in decline, perhaps the start of a long-term trend, according to a new report from Bloomberg NEF. The report found that “global investments in solar, wind, and other clean energy sources added up to $117.8 billion during the first half of 2019, a 14% decline from the same period … More World spending on renewables slowing down

The federal government’s Renewable Fuel Standard, aka “the ethanol mandate,” is running on empty when it comes to the goals of lowering gasoline prices and reducing greenhouse gases, according to a new Government Accountability Office study. The congressional watchdog agency found that the RFS program, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department … More GAO: Renewable Fuel Standard isn’t working