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Former New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici died last week in Albuquerque from complications following abdominal surgery. He was 85.   Domenici was a tireless and bipartisan legislator over his career as the longest-serving senator in New Mexico history, from 1973 to 2009. He was also a thoroughly decent man who viewed political compromise as […]

Dystopian novels are not my normal literary cup of tea (1984 excepted). But I just finished reading Marc Elsberg’s Blackout, originally published in Germany in 2012 and translated into English this year. It’s a bone-chilling thriller about an international Luddite group attempting to destroy modern civilization by bringing down first the European and then the […]

The highly-touted Department of Energy’s grid study is anodyne and irrelevant but worthwhile nonetheless. Commissioned by new energy secretary Rick Perry in April, the order for the study charged the Department of Energy staff to examine whether current policy was responsible for base load coal and nuclear plant retirements that jeopardize the reliability of the […]

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 […]

The same technology that links our phones to other smart devices is the key to unlocking a more intelligent, efficient, and reliable electrical grid.  Every day, we bear witness to the breathtaking pace of technological advancement in the modern world. Yet when we go home and turn on the light, the bulb is illuminated in […]

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 […]

In 1957, legendary Calypso singer and civil rights activist Harry Bellefonte recorded “Jamaica Farewell,” which became a major hit in the U.S. The song’s chorus: “Sad to say, I’m on my way, won’t be back for many a day.” That looks like the theme song for nuclear power in the U.S. (and perhaps Western Europe […]

Fuel diversity is a topic that comes up often in discussions of electricity policy, generally thought to be a worthwhile, even indispensable, attribute in an energy system. A new analysis by R Street, a Washington free-market think tank, questions the conventional fealty toward fuel diversity, arguing that “a diverse fuel supply is not, in and […]

An old saw among Washington’s large class of political cynics, reflecting decades of gridlock, goes, “Democrats can’t be trusted to govern. Republicans are incapable of governing.” The Trump administration so far is proving the cynics right. Exhibit 1 is the obscure but powerful Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, nominally part of the Department of Energy but […]

The Trump administration has still not nominated candidates to fill three vacancies at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. While hardly the stuff of Washington Post A-section attention, the inability of Trump to unlock FERC, which currently has no quorum, holds up important U.S. infrastructure projects, including natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas export terminals. […]

A major dustup over national energy policies is brewing between state governments and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It’s about basic regulatory authorities, with the states emboldened by Trump administration rhetoric about states’ rights, and the feds handcuffed by the apparent unwillingness (or incompetence) of the White House in filling vacant FERC seats. If FERC […]

Could the software technology that is the backbone behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin provide a path for electric utilities to accommodate the swirling financial transactions that accompany distributed generation and micogrids? The software technology is “blockchain,” a transaction recording software that, according to its advocates, provides “an incorrubtible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be […]

While doing some research for a book I’m working on, I came across a June 5, 1953 memo by Hyman Rickover, head of the naval reactors branch of the Atomic Energy Commission. For those readers who don’t know, Rickover is the father of nuclear power for electricity in the U.S., both for the U.S. Navy […]

It was an astonishing event when two MIT nuclear engineering graduate students at the end of 2015 announced they had come up with a revolutionary design for a molten salt nuclear reactor that could solve many of the technological problems of conventional light-water reactors. Cofounders of the firm Transatomic – Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie […]

Harold Denton, a career federal civil servant who helped prevent panic during the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island March 28, 1979 and days after, died February 13 at his home in Knoxville, Tenn. He was 80. The cause of death was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease coupled with complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Denton was an […]

The threat of a catastrophe at California’s Oroville Dam appears to be over. California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) lifted the evacuation order that last week moved some 180,000 residents out of the area that could be flooded if the water level topped the 770-foot dam. But the dam’s troubles have also temporarily brought down […]

Did a top federal government climate scientist hide data in order to refute a record of nearly two recent decades when global warming didn’t appear to occur? Did that scientist then refuse to archive the data, preventing independent analysis? That’s the claim of John Bates, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist in charge […]

With the Trump administration’s elevation of Democrat Cheryl LaFleur to acting chairman of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the demotion of Norman Bay (and his subsequent resignation) the agency now lacks a quorum as of Friday, Feb. 3. What are the practical consequences? This is not a unique situation at FERC. In early 1993, as […]

The incoming Trump administration will see its selection of an energy and environment management team at the Department of Energy, Department of Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency in place soon. A series of confirmation hearings this week for Trump nominees Rep. Ryan Zinke, Montana Republican, for Interior; Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt for EPA; […]

The U.S. government – the Department of Energy, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the White House – has again shown how ham-handed and stereotyped it is when it comes to Asian-American nuclear scientists and fears of espionage related to China. The government appears to be profiling scientists and engineers with Chinese backgrounds. The […]

Regardless of one’s views of the social values of nuclear power — compelling cases can be made all around — as a business proposition nuclear stinks. The latest evidence comes from the giant Japanese conglomerate Toshiba, which saw a third of its market value vanish in two days of trading (20% in one day, a […]

The Obama administration has fired two parting shots at the coal industry that are more about public relations than environmental protection. They could be early and easy targets for the incoming Trump administration to show its resolve to “rescue” coal. Just about a year ago, in January, the administration announced a moratorium on new coal […]