The Biden administration is moving to increase fees for onshore oil and gas leasing on federal land, updating policies that date back to the 1950s. The move, published as a proposed rule in the July 24 Federal Register, is certain to lead to a furious assault from oil and gas industry. In its proposal, the… More Biden BLM Moves to Reform Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing
A predictable, cyclical, celestial event could strike the Earth this year or next, possibly eclipsing climate change, Ukraine, or the upcoming presidential campaign for damage and drama, at least in the short term. The scientific moniker is “coronal mass ejections” or, predictably, CMEs. For laymen, call it “solar flares” or “solar storms.” In our acronym-addicted… More The Great Solar Storm of 2024?
Natural gas – often touted by the gas industry and its supporters for its reliability – failed miserably during the 2022 Christmas weekend Winter Storm Elliott in the nation’s largest wholesale electricity market, PJM, and “tested the reliability of much of the Eastern Interconnection.” The failure also cast doubts on PJM’s important capacity market, designed… More PJM’s Elliott Autopsy: Natural Gas Failed, Capacity Market Stumbled
Russian Explosion. An explosion of some sort at a large Russian uranium enrichment plant in the Urals last wseek has reportedly killed one worker, although details are sparse and state-owned nuclear monopoly Rosatom is playing down the event. The first account, from the now all-digital magazine Newsweek, was somewhat breathless. “More than 100 people have… More Euro Nuke Notes: Russian Explosion, Hot Water, Zaporizhzhia, UK SMR Game
The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to aggressively reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fueled electric power plants over the next 20 years, based on the authorities in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. For many observers, the EPA plan proposes technological prestidigitation, pre-and-post combustion. Post-combustion control is carbon capture and sequestration from flue… More Biden’s Big, Risky Energy Bets Part 2: Low Greenhouse Gas Hydrogen
When the Biden administration in May rolled out its major plan to reduce CO2 emissions from electric power plants, the EPA concocted a way to keep legacy coal-fired plants in service – largely seen as a concession to the electric utility industry. The administration’s proposed coal plant rescue relies on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).… More Biden’s Big, Risky Energy Bets Part 1: Carbon Capture and Sequestration
When it comes to electricity, California often gets highlighted as a case study of what can go wrong. The easiest example is the state’s high electricity prices. According to ChooseEnergy.com, the average Golden State retail electricity rate is 29.54 cents/kilowatt-hour, 46th highest in the nation. Hawaii is the highest, at 43.18 cents/KWh. Idaho and North… More California Electric Prices: The Highs and Lows
Uranium enrichment firm Urenco has announced it will expand its New Mexico plant – the only operating commercial enrichment operation in North America – by 15%. New cascades at the plant at Eunice, N.M., are scheduled to go into operation by 2025. The British-German-Dutch consortium said, “New commitments from US customers for non-Russian fuel underpin… More Urenco to Expand NM Uranium Enrichment Plant
The aging, under-sized and Balkanized U.S. high-voltage electric power grid has emerged as a significant bottleneck to greater development of necessary technology to meet the nation’s goals for greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power sector. The problem isn’t just this nation’s inability to build new transmission lines across state boundaries, when the… More Permitting Plagues Renewable Grid Connections
In a pro forma response to a congressional order, the Biden administration has issued a lukewarm report on the possibility of using solar geoengineering – reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the earth – to respond to global warming. The report — Congressionally Mandated Research Plan and an Initial Research Governance Framework Related to Solar… More Geoengineering: There Goes the Sun, And It’s All Right?