The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is back in business, with three commissioners constituting a quorum. The agency has a scheduled monthly public meeting for Sept. 20. By then it may have a full slate of five commissioners. But getting FERC rolling again involved some peculiar political musical chairs on the part of the White House. […]

Is the highly-touted 2015 Paris climate accord substantive or merely international slight-of-hand? In a new paper in the British journal Nature, a group of six international scholars, led by David G. Victor of the University of California, San Diego, suggest that the agreement is proving to be a sham. Titled “Prove Paris was more than […]

While the Trump administration has been glacially slow in filling second-tier jobs at federal energy agencies, his nominees to date ring few warning bells among those who have followed appointments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Energy. At FERC, which is far more important to the on-the-ground, day-to-day operations of […]

The legendary Beach Boys rock group in 1963 recorded “Be True to Your School” on their early album “Little Deuce Coupe.” Among the lyrics, “Now what’s the matter buddy, ain’t you heard of my school, it’s number one in the state.” Electric markets roil over what appear to be fundamental challenges to the market restructuring […]

The limitations of lithium-ion batteries, particularly for electric utility use, are well known: They have a short lifetime, they don’t like rapid cycling, they run out of power quickly, and they can catch on fire, particularly when linked together (as Elon Musk is planning for his South Australia project). So why have well-financed, well-thought-out high-tech […]

Behold, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): Cheryl LaFleur, chairman and sole commissioner. Thanks to a largely feckless Trump administration, the five-member FERC now consists of only one member, leaving the commission, an important energy infrastructure agency, continued partially crippled for lack of a quorum. FERC has been hobbled since early February, when Trump demoted […]

Global warming activists, what are you afraid of? You have no majority public support for your assertion that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are solely responsible for a warming planet. You cling to a fake life raft of a “97% scientific consensus,” although many of those scientists have no expertise in climate science. You’re on the […]

A group of 21 prominent energy and climate experts, writing in the June 19 edition of PNAS (“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”) finds that the argument by Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson that the U.S. can end carbon dioxide emissions with an energy diet entirely of wind, solar, and hydro “between 2050 and […]

Veteran global warming gadfly David Wojick is mounting a challenge to the way climate science is being taught in our schools, and raising money online for his venture. At the same time, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt says he wants to mount teams to debate climate science, according to the Washington Post. Full disclosure: […]

Glenn Schleede, one of the most significant and least known figures in U.S. energy policy over the past 50 years, died May 7. He was 83. The cause of death was glioblastoma, a brain cancer he had been fighting for several years. Glenn Schleede Schleede served as a policy analyst and advisor to three Republican […]