Blog

Washington, D.C., August 17, 2014 – Samsung Electronics last week announced that it has acquired a Washington-based home electronics firm, SmartThings, for an undisclosed sum. The move is further evidence that the electric utility industry’s still forming visions of a smart grid to control customers energy use could be bypassed by wireless technology and the […]

In a series of events that could have been choreographed by the Three Stooges, John Norris yesterday resigned his seat on the Federal Energy Commission. He will become the top official representing the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Italy, thanks to his old friend and former boss, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack. The Norris resignation has […]

Washington, D.C. – Rumors are surfacing in Washington that John Norris, a Democratic member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and FERC’s most liberal commissioner, is poised to resign, some three years before his term expires in June 2017. Norris has already said he won’t seek reappointment, and complained about the tawdry circumstances that have […]

Washington, D.C. — Electricity generation from natural gas, nuclear, and hydro are far better economic and environmental propositions than wind or solar, according to a paper from the Washington-based Brookings Institution – The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies. The paper by Brookings fellow Charles R. Frank avoids the usual approach to analyzing […]

Washington, D.C. – Is the conventional approach to nuclear safety in the U.S. – and most of the world – fundamentally flawed? That’s the clear implication of a recent National Academy Sciences report on the U.S. response to the 2011 catastrophe at Fukushima. Although the report has not gotten much attention in the U.S. media, […]

Washington, D.C. — Robert G. Abboud, a Chicago-area businessman-politician, wants to buy a well-used Wisconsin nuke. But the owner, Virginia’s Dominion Resources, says it doesn’t want to sell the Kewaunee plant that it shut down in 2012. Abboud is the principal in RGA Labs in Barrington, Ill., an energy engineering consulting firm. He’s a nuclear […]

Washington, D.C., July 15, 2014 – Is Miami sinking under the assault of a climate gone wild? That’s the characterization of an article in Britain’s left-oriented Guardian newspaper. But the piece is generating push back from non-ideological and moderate journalists. And the Guardian’s breathless hype is too often reflective of general media coverage of the […]

Washington, D.C., July 12, 2014 – In public, Gina McCarthy, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, comes across as a no-nonsense, rough-and-tumble, tough cookie. But a recent flap over the origins of her agency’s proposed rules for controlling carbon dioxide from existing coal-fired power plants shows her to be defensive and thin-skinned. The revelation of […]

Washington, D.C., July 9, 2014 – President Obama made a major political mistake in using the ambiguous authorities in the 1990 Clean Air Act to take on the task of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. Today, it looks like Obama’s petulant push to go where Congress wouldn’t on climate policy is […]

Washington, D.C., July 3, 2014 – Do you want a future in which you have to plug in your username and password on your smart phone to open you refrigerator? Talk about an annoyance. This thought came to me when reading a new report in the June 30 issue of MIT’s Technology Review magazine. Much […]

Washington, D.C., June 30, 2014 – There appears to be a cyclical element to the story of nuclear power in the U.S., an ebb-and-flow that repeats itself over time. There’s no lock-step periodicity, but the tides of hyperbole and deflation occur with some regularity. The most recent case of the binge-and-repent cycle in nuclear comes […]

June 27, 2014 – Iceland, the westernmost country in Europe, is unique. Its geology is entirely volcanic, as it sits on the meeting place of the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. It has a unique language, with a 32-letter alphabet, based on Scandinavian, Saxon, and Celtic roots. Iceland had the first parliamentary system of […]

This week, the Bonn climate change conference concluded in Germany. During the talks, discussion focused on adaptation and long-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals to meet climate targets. These mitigation and adaptation strategies build on international momentum to tackle climate change, such as China’s announcement that by 2016, its first carbon emissions cap will come […]

Along with 3 billion other viewers around the world, I plan to tune in for the month-long World Cup to see whether the 22-year old Neymar can withstand the colossal pressure that has been put upon his shoulders to deliver a win for team Brazil. Every time I turn on my television set, I’m using World Cup-related energy. And […]

  Washington, D.C., June 10, 2014 – How can governments and businesses make investment and policy decisions in the face of enormous uncertainties? That’s a question facing many in the world today as scientists assert that global warming could be an existential crisis, but with great uncertainties attached. The World Bank’s economics team offers some […]

Washington, D.C., June 6, 2014 – Could the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision vacating the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s demand response rules for organized markets also spill over into the FERC’s controversial rule on regional transmission planning? That thought occurred to me when I read the decision on Order 745, the […]

Washington, D.C., June 3, 2014 – Amid all the hype and hoopla over the Obama administration’s plan, revealed this week, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants – this will end civilization as we know it, this will create a brave, new world, and so forth from all over the political and ideological […]

Washington, D.C., May 28, 2014 – Norman Bay is the wrong choice to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Currently head of FERC’s enforcement office, Bay has demonstrated that he is a skillful and tenacious prosecutor. That may be what FERC needs in its staff enforcement office. It’s not what the agency needs at the […]

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 […]