A dispatch from the kingdom of coal: The demise of King Coal, both here and in the rest of the world, is much exaggerated. In a new report, Moody’s Investors Service says U.S. steam coal for power plants continues a general decline, but markets and prices for metallurgical coal used in making steel look stable. Overall, … More King Coal isn’t dead, here or abroad
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell, 1984 That’s the opening sentence in George Orwell’s important dystopian novel 1984, one of the most significant literary events of the 20th Century and, I would argue, particularly relevant today. June 8 is the 70th anniversary of the publication … More Orwell, D-Day, and the importance of truth and plain language
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission dodged a judicial bullet this week. But the tone of the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a natural gas pipeline case suggests that the commission may not be able to justify its controversial refusal to consider upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions in … More D.C. Circuit skeptical of FERC pipeline environmental reviews
Optimism about the future of electric vehicles continues. But skepticism also continues about the reality of EVs making a major dent in the sales of internal combustion engine cars and trucks in the U.S. and worldwide. Earlier this month, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, with the characteristic aura of superior wisdom for these sorts of analyses, … More Electric Vehicles: Batteries half full or half empty?
It’s time to put up a headstone at Yucca Mountain with this epitaph carved in stone: YUCCA MOUNTAIN NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY 1984-2019 R.I.P The House of Representatives’ $46 billion spending bill for the Department of Energy, released by the House Appropriations Committee this week, has no money for the long controversial Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear … More Is it R.I.P for Yucca Mountain?
Ohio-based FirstEnergy is trying an audacious regulatory double play in the state legislature, with two bills aimed at subsidizing the company’s two unprofitable Ohio nuclear power plants – Davis Besse and Perry – while at the same time vastly increasing the profits the parent company can earn while scaling back renewable energy and energy efficiency … More FirstEnergy’s controversial political double play
A court case challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s grant of eminent domain to a natural gas pipeline, originally brought over the long-running, contentious issue of how to treat greenhouse gas emissions, has turned into a case of whether the commission can approve condemnation of private property for pipelines that serve foreign, as well as … More FERC’s eminent pipeline domain authority legally challenged
The overly-ambitious, $9 billion V.C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina – a joint venture of then SCANA Corp. and state-owned generation and transmission utility Santee Cooper – failed miserably in July 2017, when the two essentially equal partners walked away and left an uncompleted hulk on the site of two operating nuclear power plants. … More Is the failed VC Summer project South Carolina’s Brexit?
On March 12, Nathan Myhrvold, idea man for Bill Gates and a principal in Gates’s Terra Power breeder reactor project, spoke to an audience of thousands at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s annual regulatory information conference. Basing his talk on a November Scientific American article, Myhrvold pushed for a new generation of advanced, innovative nuclear … More Commentary: The fallacy of industry self-regulation
State renewable energy mandates are an inefficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electric generation, according to a new working paper from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). The paper – “Do Renewable Portfolio Standards Deliver?” – argues that state-level renewable electricity mandates in 29 states and the District of … More Are state renewable targets too expensive?