Is the Biden administration’s priority on reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations a wise move or a distraction from the more important goal of controlling carbon dioxide emissions? It’s not an easy question, despite a lot of buzz around methane reductions, claiming that action harvests (here’s the cliché) “low-hanging fruit.” Touting the program,… More Methane reductions: smart or a policy diversion?
This is a variation of a column that I have been writing yearly for decades. I write to remind readers that skepticism has been a driving factor in my over 50 years in journalism, including small and large city dailies, the Associated Press, Congressional Quarterly, Energy Daily, Electricity Daily, POWER magazine, and The Quad Report.… More Skepticism is a virtue
The Biden administration is proposing to set aside some 22 million acres of federal land in 11 western states for solar electric generation. The administration move would update its 2012 Western Solar Plan. It adds 5.4 million acres in five states — Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington state, and Wyoming – to the 16.6 million acres… More BLM ups its ambitious plan for solar on public land
The vulnerable Texas electric grid has survived Winter Storm Heather, which brought frigid weather to the Lone Star State and snow and equally frigid temperatures to the East and Middle Atlantic states. Texans, who have become familiar with cold winter weather and searing summer heat bringing statewide blackouts, responded to pleas from the high-voltage transmission… More Texas unharmed by Winter Storm Heather
The massive earthquake that struck Japan on New Years Day, killing an estimated 200, also damaged one of the country’s nuclear power plants as the nation is still trying to recover from the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster. An earthquake and resulting tsunami, an enormous wall of sea water, crashed into the nuclear units and… More Japan’s earthquake response and the U.S. regulatory paradigm
By Henry Sokolski Six years ago, my organization, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), ran a mock exercise of a law Congress passed in 1978 but that the administration refused to implement —Title V of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978. Title V called on the State and Energy Departments to conduct country-specific analyses of how… More Forgotten, repealed nonproliferation law provision revived
The item on the agenda of the December meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission looked innocuous, filled with the dry, abstract language of most of the commission’s action items. It was an uncontested “settlement agreement” among a bunch of parties on an electric transmission issue going back some 15 years. The action marked the… More The $250 million PATH to nowhere
Troubled small modular nuclear reactor developer NuScale (SMR:NYSE) has laid off about 40% of its staff, some 200 employees. While the company has not acknowledged the layoffs, Huffpost obtained a recording of the “virtual, all-hands meeting” at the company’s Portland, Ore., headquarters last Friday (Jan. 5). The online news service also had “Two sources with… More No happy new year for Nuscale
By Eric Gomez and Henry Sokolski All eyes are currently riveted on Israel’s ground war in Gaza, but it’s not too soon to consider what comes next — a U.S.-brokered deal to normalize Israeli-Saudi relations. Before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, President Joe Biden had already offered Riyadh a formal defense commitment and civil nuclear energy cooperation including enriching… More Guest Commentary: Will a Gaza settlement raise nuclear weapons risks?
The Internal Revenue Service has proposed strict rules for green hydrogen production tax credits. Environmental and renewable energy interests are applauding. Fossil fuel and legacy electric generators are fuming. A fight over the final rules, including the federal courts, looks likely. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act provided for the hydrogen production tax credits, (known… More IRS proposes tough rules for hydrogen production tax credits