Blog

Washington, D.C., May 21, 2014 – The Pace University’s School of Law has made a great choice in Karl Rábago to head its groundbreaking Energy and Climate Center. He is among the most measured and thoughtful advocates for renewable energy and sensible energy policies that I have ever had the privilege of covering as a […]

Washington, D.C., May 20, 2014 – The stench of McCarthyism has begun to permeate the debate over climate science. Some of the extreme devotees of the doctrine of the indelible fingerprint of mankind on a warming world are adopting the tactics of the odious and late Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. Most […]

Washington, D.C., May 18, 2014 – India is well known for the limited scope and dodgy reliability of its electrical infrastructure. The largely-rural country is legendary for its flickering lights and unpredictable electric service. An exception is the western state of Gujarat, where consumers enjoy electricity 24/7. The electrification record in Gujarat played a significant […]

On Friday, April 25, approximately two dozen intervenors filed comments regarding PacifiCorp’s proposed amendments to its Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) to permit its participation in the California Independent System Operator Corp.’s proposed Energy Imbalance Market (“EIM”). The CAISO EIM is the first proposed organized market structure across a multi-state footprint in the West, which […]

Washington, D.C., May 8, 2014 – It just gets messier and messier at the Environmental Protection Agency, which I anointed in March as the champion of agency mismanagement in Washington. That blog was based in large part on the case of  the now jailed John Beale, who defrauded EPA (and the taxpayers) of $900,000 by […]

Washington, D.C., May 5, 2014 – The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Program in New Mexico looks increasingly like a governmental version of Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray.” For years, on the surface, the project to store transuranic waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons edifice in underground salt beds in New Mexico program […]

Washington, D.C., April 28, 2014 – Here’s a classic case of how Congress can slyly pick the pockets of American consumers. The victims don’t even know that they are missing the money. Although in the larger framework of the federal budget, the amount isn’t very impressive, since 1992 consumers of electricity from nuclear plants have […]

Washington, D.C., April 22, 2014 – It’s a really gutsy move. Identical twins Rich and Kevin Gates, who run a small Pennsylvania hedge fund, are challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to sue them for allegedly violating the agency’s trading rules. Their firm – Powhatan Energy Fund – has been charged by FERC with engaging […]

Alex Radin, a true public power pioneer, died last Friday (April 11) at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 92.   Radin joined the American Public Power Association – a Washington lobbying group representing municipal, state, and customers of federally-owned utilities – in 1948, the third hire for the small organization, as an editor. […]

Washington, D.C., April 13, 2014 – The nomination of Norman Bay, the Obama administration’s latest pick to join the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and become its chairman, may be in serious jeopardy. Bay, a former federal prosecutor in New Mexico, is currently FERC’s chief enforcement officer, where he’s had a high-profile role in going after […]

Washington, D.C., April 6, 2014 — Texas Gov. Rick Perry doesn’t want federal money to expand health care to poor Texans. He wants federal money to store nuclear waste to benefit rich folks, most of them not Texans. In a letter to Lieutenant Gov. David Dewhurst (who is more powerful in the bizarre Texas government […]

Of all of the secretaries of energy since the cabinet-level agency came to life in 1977, James R. Schlesinger is the only one likely to be remembered by historians. Jim Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, died of pneumonia in a Baltimore hospital March 27. He was 85. I knew Schlesinger slightly, covering him as Jimmy […]

Washington, D.C., March 23, 2014 – Legendary 20th Century baseball executive Branch Rickey famously said, “Luck is the residue of design.” It’s a wise observation. But sometimes luck is just that. Science Daily reports this month that on July 23, 2102, an enormous solar storm – resulting from two nearly simultaneous explosions on the sun, […]

Washington, D.C., March 17, 2014 — What is the most poorly managed federal agency in Washington? There are plenty of contenders. But based on recent evidence, the clear winner in my mind has to be the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. First, there is the laughably sad tale of John Beale, long a fixture in EPA’s […]

Washington, D.C., March 14, 2014 – Renewable portfolio standards, mandating specific percentages of the generating mix be met with renewable generating technologies, are popular among many U.S. state governments. But does it make sense to impose a nationwide renewable standard? Absolutely not, said the principals at Carnegie Mellon University’s Electricity Industry Center six years ago […]

Washington, D.C., March 5, 2014 – The Obama administration’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, which the White House rolled out yesterday, would stop funding for the project at the Savannah River weapons site to combined weapons-grade plutonium with uranium to produce a mixed-oxide (MOX) civilian reactor fuel. As I reported late last month, the administration […]

Washington, D.C., March 2, 2024 –Is there life off the electric grid? Roscoe Bartlett, 87, a Republican who represented my western Maryland congressional district in Congress for 20 years before losing a reelection campaign to a Democrat in 2012, has long been preaching about the limits of the electric grid. He’s been an outspoken advocate […]

Washington, D.C., February 28, 2104 – In 1946, George Orwell wrote a brilliant essay about how language and politics intersect, which has relevance today. In this essay, “Politics and the English Language,” published in Horizon, Orwell makes the essential point: bad thinking begets bad writing and bad writing begets bad thinking. He says succinctly, “But […]

Washington, D.C., February 27, 2014 – The Department of Energy’s behind-schedule, over-budget project at the Savannah River weapons plant in South Carolina to blend weapons-grade plutonium with uranium to make civilian nuclear fuel appears to have the blind staggers. Don’t be surprised if the project, which enjoys enormous support in South Carolina and Georgia, is […]

Washington, D.C., February 26, 2014 – As a journalist for some 40 years, I have learned to be skeptical about almost everything around me. The credo of journalism, beaten into me by education and life lessons is, as the journalistic cliché has it: “Your mother loves you? Check it out.” So it’s time to reiterate […]

February 24, 2014 – Here’s an interesting conundrum, posed by UBS utility analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith in a recent report sent to his clients: If anti-nuclear and economic forces succeed in closing several nuclear plants in the New York in the near term, it could cripple the state’s plans for reducing greenhouse gas emission and devastate […]

Washington, D.C., February 20, 2014 – The wicked winter of 2014 and what may have been a terrorist attack on a California electric substation last year were on the minds of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today, although not on the formal FERC agenda. First, a weather report. After experiencing two mild winters, this year […]

Washington, D.C., February 18, 2014 – Climatologist Judith Curry, dean of the Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Science, is a heretic to those who embrace the conventional litany about global warming. Once a devotee the accepted view, in recent years she has raised the yellow flag of skepticism. That’s made her a target […]

Washington, D.C., February 12, 2014 – As Valentines’ Day approaches, here’s a love note to the environmental movement. It has done so much over the past century-and-a-half to call attention to the assaults of modern, industrial society: Destruction of wilderness, attacks on vulnerable species; emissions of noxious chemicals into our air and water. The world […]

Washington, D.C., February 2, 2014 – Imagine, a techno-thriller for power geeks and grid gurus? Well, that’s just what the father-son team of Pat and Chris Hoffman have delivered in their book “Fury of the Fifth Angel.” When I started reading the book, within the first five pages I was reminded of the fine sci-fi […]

Washington, D.C., January 21, 2014 – Sorry, I confess I just don’t get it. Why is the Department of Energy still negotiating with the Southern Company for a below-market loan to finish construction of two more units at Georgia Power’s Vogtle nuclear plant? The utility says it will go it alone if the Obama administration […]

Washington, D.C., January 13, 2014 – The Obama administration could avoid a patch of trouble this icy season by naming Cheryl LaFleur, acting chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as the permanent chairman. At the same time, the administration should soon name another Democrat with industry credentials as the third member of its political […]

My earlier post graded my first five predictions for 2013. This post grades the remaining five posts and suggests my overall grade for 2013.   In past years, my best overall grade was a B+. I’m still hopeful I can better that score. 5. The EPA Fracks Gas. On the same day the Environmental Protection Agency […]

Washington, D.C., January 7, 2014 – The twitterverse, particularly the region where the bird is green, was aflutter over the Sunday, January 5, “60 Minutes” TV piece by Leslie Stahl on the failures of the Obama administration’s program to use economic stimulus money to push development of green energy technologies. It’s title: “The Cleantech Crash.” […]

I have presented my top 10 predictions for the year in the January issue for the past several years. I then graded myself against the actual events of the year and presented the results at the end of that year. My grades over the past three years ranged from mid- to high-B, which wasn’t bad […]