Blog

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 […]

Washington, D.C., January 3, 2014 – Senate Energy Committee Chairman Mary Landrieu? That’s likely in the second session of the 113th Congress, with the Louisiana Democrat moving up to take over a committee vitally important to U.S. energy interests (and to her home state of Louisiana, which is an important component of this story). It […]

December 3, 2013 – The World Bank and the United Nations last month held a news conference to tout their plan to raise big bucks — $600 billion or so — for electrification in developing countries (and energy efficiency in the developed world, although that’s a dubious proposition). When the bank’s Jim Yong Kim and […]

Cows get little respect these days. Except, of course, when cow is in the form of a two-inch-thick steak cooked medium-well and served still sizzling from the grill. Others prefer their beef served in a sack passed through a window. Either way, your favorite serving of beef is under attack. First came the revelation that […]

Do you remember the many predictions in past years that oil production has peaked world-wide and we will soon deplete this natural resource? M. King Hubbert, a petroleum engineer with the Shell Research Lab, developed his theory of Peak Oil  in 1956, predicting U.S. production of oil would peak between 1965 and 1970 and thereafter […]

Washington, D.C., 15 November 2013 — The literature about the development of the atomic bomb, its use against Japan, and subsequent developments, is extensive and rich (including my own book, “Too Dumb to Meter”). But a new book by Graham Farmelo — “Churchill’s Bomb: A Hidden Story of Science, War, and Politics” — provides new […]

Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2013 — Attempting to deflect continuing charges that its upcoming policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions don’t have popular support in the country, the Environmental Protection Agency this week wrapped up a series of 11 meetings around the country, which the agency has billed as “listening sessions.” The Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune […]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has put forward three excuses to justify its increasing regulatory authority over the natural gas, an authority that was specifically given to the States in the 2008 Energy Policy Act. The first was the excuse that fracking has caused pollution of potable water wells. After years of searching, the […]

On August 9, 2013, President Obama signed into law the “Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act of 2013” (the “Act”).  This legislation, passed with overwhelming support in the House and Senate, streamlines the regulatory approval process for certain hydroelectric power (“hydropower”) projects.  Perhaps more importantly, the Act reflects bipartisan recognition of the benefits of hydropower. According to […]

Washington, D.C., October 30, 2013 — The evidence that the South American coast country of Chile is going heavily for wind power is evident at every major port, from Arica in the desert north to Puerto Montt in the Patagonian temperate rainforest in the south. That’s my observation from a three-week trip by sea down […]

In February 2013 I wrote an editorial entitled “Where’s the Warming?” My argument was that the IPCC was facing a significant problem in writing the then-upcoming AR5 because the most recent global temperature data was showing a drop in global average temperatures contrary to its computer model results. One of the reviewers of the draft […]

The cost of producing electricity by natural gas and coal finished 2012 in a dead heat and future cost trends are very difficult to predict. One can read the projections (not predictions) by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and find evidence that coal is disadvantaged based on the rising cost of environmental compliance but the […]

POWER Associate Editor Sonal Patel reported on Sept. 12 that “nearly 100 renewable energy and environmental groups and businesses have asked the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to reevaluate renewable energy forecasts, alleging the agency’s projections don’t reflect ‘the current status and recent, real-world growth rates of renewables.’” The EIA forecasts are presented in its Annual […]