Blog

When Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, no one could predict the level of devastation those 155-mph sustained winds would deliver. In its wake, Maria plunged the entire island of Puerto Rico into darkness, and decimated its aging distribution, transmission and generation infrastructure. By all predictions, it was going to […]

On May 14, 2018, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability released its Multiyear Plan for Energy Sector Cybersecurity (“Plan”). The Plan is significantly guided by DOE’s 2006 Roadmap to Secure Control Systems in the Energy Sector and 2011 Roadmap to Achieve Energy Delivery Systems Cybersecurity. Taken together with DOE’s […]

In addition to the record-breaking number of women running for office, we are also seeing an uptick in women getting involved within the energy sector—an industry long dominated by men. Although the energy sector still remains one of the least gender-diverse sectors, more and more women are creating green energy initiatives, founding renewable energy companies, […]

Global demand for power and water is accelerating—and the Middle East is no exception. A burgeoning population combined with multiple industrial diversification programs is fueling a boom in power and water projects. During the first three quarters of 2017, about $30 billion of major power contracts and $20 billion of water projects were awarded across […]

A transformation is underway in the energy sector where utility grid infrastructure is evolving to produce more energy from renewable sources and incorporate new advanced grid technologies. Technology concepts such as microgrids, and distributed and district energy help to localize our energy supply and allow us to generate, store, and consume energy in the places […]

The energy industry must work together to restore trust in the digital age.   When Hurricane Harvey hit, Houston knew what to do. Emergency response plans went immediately into effect to save lives and jump-start a long recovery. But as energy leaders convene here in the world’s energy capital for CERAWeek, we need to ask […]

Commentary The clean energy industry was hit hard by two decisions coming out of the Trump administration these past few weeks. First, a 30% tariff was imposed on imported solar panels. Then earlier this week, the Trump administration proposed plans to cut the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office budgets by 65%, all while […]

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal heralded the following: “Power Plants Bloom Even as Electricity Prices Wilt.” Understandably, the WSJ editors are excited about the current spate of combined cycle construction projects. I’m also pleased about the growth in our sector (Figure 1). But I’m less sanguine about our ability to execute all […]

Is high-flying Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and purveyor of electric and self-driving cars (and maybe trucks), battery storage for solar systems, private-sector space ships, and “hyper-loop” transportation, headed for a crash? That’s the case that the investment website Seeking Alpha makes in a devastating analysis of trendy Tesla, where continued losses only seem to pump […]

The Department of Energy-generated notice of proposed rulemaking at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, aimed at rescuing coal and nuclear power generation from the vagaries of competitive markets by raising the idea of paying out-of-market prices for “resilient” generating technologies, rests on the idea of rewarding power plants that have a 90-day supply of fuel […]

The nuclear power industry has been a tremendous asset to the world for decades. Yet, when the word “nuclear” is spoken, bombs are what first come to many peoples’ minds. World governments and the industry as a whole could do well by rebranding President Eisenhower’s 1953 United Nations “Atoms for Peace” speech. Eisenhower spelled out […]

The focus of the coverage of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) plan to kill the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) has been on what it will mean for coal. The consensus is that it won’t have much impact, as major consumers of steam coal have already written off the fuel as a result of […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission got blitzed this week with comments on the Department of Energy’s proposed rule to give nuclear and coal plants a competitive advantage in competitive wholesale markets run by regional transmission organizations (RTOs). Comments came in such volume Monday that it crashed FERC’s “eFiling” system, giving those making comments another day […]

What to do about the faltering nuclear power industry? Two analysts from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in a new book, lay out what they believe is a policy agenda that can stem the growing closures of existing nuclear plants. In their book – “Keeping the Lights on at America’s Nuclear Power Plants” – […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s ukase to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week—undo over 20 years of federal policy on national electric markets to aid coal and nuclear generation—is a joke. It is an entirely political screed devoid of intellectual content. That pretty much describes Perry. Rick Perry In an administration that bills itself […]

The toy everyone had on their Christmas wish list has become a technological phenomenon being used across a range of industrial sectors. That toy is the unmanned aerial vehicle—more commonly known as a drone. As the drone’s number of uses grows, so does users’ knowledge thanks to the highly sensitive detection methods they employ. One […]

Despite spending more than $2 billion over the past 18 years, the Department of Energy’s advanced nuclear research and development program (NE) is a bust, according to an article in Environmental Research Letters and reported at Phys.Org, the website of the Institute of Physics.  According to lead researcher Ahmed Abdulla of University of California San […]

Sleek wind machines both on land and in the ocean intrigue many people. The units provide clean energy and contribute nothing to climate change. However, the early history of wind power in the U.S. included some interesting trials that bear no resemblance to the majority of today’s modern turbines. Many wind enthusiasts are aware of the […]

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 […]