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The dramatic collapse in the price of oil—currently flirting with sub-$40/barrel levels—has naturally produced an explosion of commentary on its short- and long-term effects. One curious, though predictable, narrative is starting to emerge from the environmental left: The price collapse is the death knell to shale oil, and the U.S. oil boom—which was never a […]

There’s a historical backstory to the closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant late last year, which got no mention in the general accounts of the venerable reactor’s demise. The plant played a key role in the 1960s in the evolving issue of “thermal pollution” and once-through cooling of large power plants, a topic still […]

The extensive shale deposits in the U.S. have been getting a lot of attention in recent years as technology has unlocked hydrocarbon deposits trapped in their rock strata – natural gas and natural gas liquids in the Mid-Atlantic states, gas in Texas, and crude oil (and lots of it) and gas in North Dakota. But […]

Last winter saw extreme weather – remember the “polar vortex”? – severely disrupt coal supplies to power plants in the upper Midwest (particularly Minnesota) that burn Powder River Basin coal. Plants had to reduce output, coal piles dwindled to the point they were single digit days away from exhaustion, and the BNSF Railway, the major […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s regular monthly meeting on December 18 will feature an unusual agenda item: a detailed look at winter coal deliveries to power plants. FERC said in a press release that it will “convene a panel discussion” on coal transportation problems, with witnesses from it staff, the Department of Transportation’s Surface Transportation […]

Touted as the world’s largest solar power plant, the 392-MW Ivanpah concentrating solar project in California’s Mojave Desert is underperforming and seeking a federal bailout on top of federal subsidies to build the project. Owned by Google and NRG Energy, Ivanpah was built with a $1.6 billion U.S. Department of Energy loan in 2011, out […]

Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1990. The key to the 1990 amendments, and the previous versions of the air law, was state implementation of federal requirements. State regulators would implement the federal requirements on state-regulated electric companies. In 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which started a major transformation in the electricity […]

It’s too early to be measuring Don Blankenship for a prison-striped suit. He was the odious Massey Energy CEO in April 2010 when the company’s Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine in Raleigh County in southern West Virginia exploded and killed 29 miners. Blankenship faces federal charges that could put him in jail for the […]

The on-again, off-again new federal ozone rules are on again, as the Obama administration the day before Thanksgiving announced it will revise the air standard for ground-level ozone to a range of 65 parts per billion to 75 ppb (the current standard, set in 2008), with a request for comments on the possibility of a […]

Hoping to apply the smarts they showed in the online world, in 2007 engineers at Google decided they would save Mother Earth from global warming. The company concluded that renewable energy was the path of the future and created RE<C, a moon shot approach to make renewables cheaper than fossil fuels. In 2011, Google quietly […]

Roger Pielke, Jr. has written the book on the relationship between climate change and weather disasters. Literally. His new book – Disasters & Climate Change – became available last week. The slim text (114 pages) is the best, clearest exposition yet of why the claims that particular weather events – droughts, floods, Superstorm Sandy and […]

Fractivists and climate campaigners have besieged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of late, charging that the independent agency is erecting barriers to combating global warming by granting approval for new natural gas pipelines and LNG export terminals. Activists have appeared at FERC’s normally dry-as-dust monthly public meetings to make their claims that the agency is […]

The crash of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate following this month’s elections and the unseating of Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada as majority leader has supporters of the Department of Energy’s stagnant Yucca Mountain storage site for spent civilian nuclear fuel singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Is the refrain premature? Former Democratic Sen. […]

San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer was demonstrably a heck of a hedge fund investor. But as an investor in partisan politics, he’s a bust. Steyer, the green equivalent of the Koch brothers on the right, reportedly poured $76 million of his personal holdings into his NextGen Climate Action PAC. Steyer’s political action committee is on […]

Tuesday’s sweeping Republican electoral triumph likely will see its greatest impact on the power industry at the state level, where governors often appoint state regulators and set state policy on many energy and environmental topics. What happened Tuesday in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in gubernatorial races illustrates the point. In Pennsylvania, one of the few highlights […]

President Obama named Allison Macfarlane to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and appointed her chairman in July 2012 largely to restore some calm to the chaos that reigned at the NRC under the chairmanship of Greg Jaczko, whose patron was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Her expertise in nuclear waste issues – a geologist, she […]

Robert W. Fri, long a major figure in environmental and energy policy in Washington, although better known to the public as a director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, died October 10 at Sibley Hospital in Washington. The Washington Post obituary said the cause was lung cancer. He was 78. As an […]

The Sierra Club’s frequently silly “Beyond Natural Gas” campaign just got a whole lot sillier. Last week, the New Jersey chapter put out the claim that repowering an old coal- and oil-fired power plant in Cape May with natural gas would hurt area reliability. If that sounds like an odd statement from an environmental group, […]

If you judge that West Virginia’s coal politics are slimy this electoral season, take a look at Kentucky. In an earlier blog posting, I took exception to the way Republican-oriented outside groups were sliming the West Virginia Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Natalie Tennant. Now it’s time to turn the tables, look at neighboring […]

In the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination contest, Sen. Paul Tsongas repeatedly charged the establishment in his party with lacking “new ideas.” When he and front-runner Walter Mondale, former senator and vice president, locked up in a televised debate, Mondale correctly pointed out that Tsongas had no new ideas. Riffing on a popular Wendy’s TV ad, […]

My home in Maryland is just across the Potomac River from West Virginia – I can see my neighboring state when I walk out of my front door and look to the left – where a U.S. Senate seat is up for grabs in the coming election. Well, only nominally up for grabs. There’s very […]

Let’s get frank about fracking. As I see it, horizontal well drilling and hydraulic fracturing of tight rock formations to release hydrocarbons is the best thing to happen in U.S. energy in 40 years. I’ve reported on fracking developments in the context of power generation since 2008. I’ve covered energy issues, with a focus on […]

For much of its 15-year history, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (nee the Midwest Independent System Operator) didn’t pay much attention to the topic of “resource adequacy.” The regional transmission organization, in a region rich in baseload, coal-fired power plants, had a 30%-35% reserve margin through most of its years of operation. That excess in […]

An article in today’s Washington Post troubles me greatly. It outlines severe retention and moral problems at the Department of Homeland Security, the uber-agency created in the aftermath of the 9/11 horror. DHS – much like the Department of Energy in 1977 – was cobbled together in haste in 2002 from some 22 disparate agencies […]

The perils of having only four members in a five-member regulatory agency were on display this week at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The commission deadlocked 2-2 over whether to consider a complaint from activists claiming that the owner of the 1,530-MW coal-fired Brayton Point generating station near Boston manipulated an ISO-New England forward capacity […]

Washington, D.C. – A recent editorial in the industry news service World Nuclear News struck an intellectual and emotional chord for me. The editorial argues that the nuclear industry must “ditch the jargon” of the nuclear industry in order to reach out more effectively to the financial community. I agree completely and would broaden the […]

Washington, D.C. – With the departure of John Norris, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission may once again face a long period of a vacancy on the five-member commission. While the Obama administration has announced its intention to nominate Colette Honorable, chairman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission, to fill the vacancy, the clock is working […]

Washington, D.C. – Last month’s 6.0 earthquake in California’s Napa Valley has again raised the issue of whether the U.S. nuclear regulatory system adequately accounts for seismic activity in its safety analysis of the 2,000-MW Diablo Canyon plant. Diablo Canyon is the last operating nuclear station in the state and located well away from the […]

Washington, D.C. – Many economists and policymakers believe that the best way to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions is the simplest: a market-based price on the emissions. But that approach – either through a direct carbon tax or a somewhat more convoluted cap-and-trade mechanism – is simply not politically possible, as the Obama administration has […]

Washington, D.C. — Congress enacted legislation creating the U.S. Department of Energy in August of 1977. The agency began operating in October of 1977. Was that wise legislation? In the 37 years since its creation, much has changed in the U.S. energy economy. When Jimmy Carter pushed Congress to create the energy department, the U.S. […]