Commentary

For most of my childhood growing up in a small town in the foothills of North Carolina, my dad worked in the blanket factory as a supervisor in the labs—working on fabric treatments, dyes, weaves, and all the other things that you’d never think about going into the design of a blanket. On Saturday mornings, […]

POWER magazine has always held a special place in my heart. After my father left the Navy, he became a power engineer and a loyal subscriber to the magazine. As a kid, I remember stacks of the publication all over the house. At the high point my father had hundreds of issues amassed over decades. […]

Climate and extreme weather are increasingly impacting energy systems around the world. Whether it is prolonged, extreme cold in Texas, wildfires in California, high winds in the Midwest, or the recent prediction for an above-normal 2022 hurricane season, it is clear extreme weather events are testing the resilience of the North American grid. Changes in […]

Although the electricity generation and transportation sectors account for a far greater share of greenhouse gas emissions than the residential and commercial building sector, policy makers are targeting building electrification as a means for making a significant contribution to economy-wide emission reductions. Federal, state, and local governments are using various policy levers toward this goal, […]

Americans now face the highest inflation rates in more than a generation. That’s certainly true for energy prices, where oil has soared past $100 a barrel. Americans are now paying $5 a gallon for gas on average heading into the summer. But energy scarcity and high prices aren’t just problems for consumers; they’re problems for investors […]

The current geopolitical crisis spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine should provide a rude awakening in the West to our misguided and flawed policies toward energy development by government and major

Commercial and industrial (C&I) enterprises rely on their power supply. Many facilities, such as hospitals, federal institutions, and military bases—those considered mission critical—have long been at the forefront of finding solutions to keep their lights on. In today’s world, the need for reliable and resilient power is critical for a wide range of industries. Uninterrupted […]

Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions last year announced plans to develop a new carbon capture and storage project across the Midwest. The project seeks to capture carbon dioxide emissions that otherwise would be emitted into the atmosphere from biorefineries, such as ethanol plants, compress the captured carbon dioxide, and transport it through a pipeline to North […]

Crafting solutions to address the pressing challenges of our time is Congress’s foremost job. There is no doubt that policy-making can be messy, take time, and require compromise. But, overall members and their staff do incredible work for the American public. During my tenure serving Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, I prided myself on working with […]

Electric vehicles are coming. Do you hear them? (Probably not.) The exact speed of our collective embrace of electric vehicles (EVs) will vary around the country—due to factors such as EV familiarity, vehicle availability, purchase prices and incentives—but the cars are coming down the road at a steady clip. In the immediate future, U.S. President […]

The highs and lows of markets for renewable energy are driving more interest in granular pricing data. Any company embarking on a new project must do its research to ensure that it calculates the proceeds based on the right financial information. With so much data now readily available, it’s more important than ever to use […]

Oil, gas and power prices are increasing on a daily basis. From weather to world events, inflation has skyrocketed and energy prices are soaring. This has created a market volatility that is directly impacting the wallets of consumers and the bottom lines of all size businesses. Yet some companies are having little to no economic […]

Major cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and New York have either enacted or proposed measures to ban or discourage the use of natural gas in new homes and buildings, just a few years after

Energy powers everything we do. Where and how we create it—and how we store and distribute it—is constantly evolving. One of the most likely evolutions is electrification, which promises to have a huge

Electric utilities will play a critical role in new broadband infrastructure deployment under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, known as the Infrastructure Act. Whether access to the internet

Reliable energy forms a fundamental building block of industrial and modern society. When a country examines its energy profile and determines its energy policy, it considers three main pillars: energy equity

When the White House signed an executive order to get to 50% electric vehicle (EV) sales share by 2030 while relying on American manufacturing, there were some serious concerns about whether the U.S. could make that many EVs, and then create the infrastructure in time to support that many new EVs on the road. COMMENTARY […]

The Biden administration in 2021 announced its goal of developing 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030. Deep water off the West Coast means that any wind energy generation on this side of the U.S. must float

As we commemorate another Earth Day this April, the challenges facing our energy systems and the environment seem more pressing than ever. Americans face continued economic uncertainty following the COVID-19

Electrification is changing global energy use, as entities worldwide replace technologies that use fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil, and coal, with processes that electricity as the source of energy. Proponents of electrification tout it as a way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the industrial, transportation, building and other sectors, which […]

Under current law, there are significant tax benefits for renewable energy projects in the United States. These benefits include nonrefundable ITC and PTC tax credits and depreciation deductions.  From the perspective of a renewable energy developer, however, such tax benefits may be difficult to use effectively.  Currently, ITC and PTC tax credits are nonrefundable, meaning that […]

Millions of American citizens rely on the power grid for every aspect of their lives, making it a critically vital system that cannot afford to be disrupted. But as the materials shortage continues to hamstring the energy sector, more public utility companies face the threat of potential shutdowns that could leave millions with electricity. COMMENTARY […]

CEOs of energy companies with projects in Russia are facing career-defining leadership moments. What do you do when your corporate investments nearly overnight become politically, economically and socially untenable to your key stakeholders? Within days of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, BP’s Chief Executive Bernard Looney was quick out of the gate to tell the world […]

The venerable business of commodity trading, already in the news for the supply chain impacts of COVID, has moved to center stage with the war in Ukraine. Impacts of Russia’s invasion could ripple to manufacturing of all kinds, especially the clean energy transition we need to meet climate goals. COMMENTARY Within the first week of […]

It is not an over-reaction to state that we are in the midst of a planetary emergency. We face the combined threats of climate, nature loss, and human health pandemics. Of the nine planetary boundaries that

Africa has approximately 600 million people without access to clean, reliable, and affordable electric power (80% of the global total). On the flip side, the continent has some of the fastest growing economies in the world. Countries like Egypt and Ethiopia have recorded more than 6% annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) with the […]

In the race to generate and distribute renewable energy, developers must clear numerous regulatory hurdles. For many projects, this may include obtaining a voluntary “incidental take” permit under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA). The BGEPA incidental take permitting program has frustrated both developers and operators due to, among other things, uncertainty of […]

All market indicators show that distributed energy resources (DERs) boom will continue into this year and beyond. In fact, a recent Frost & Sullivan report states the global annual investments in DERs will increase by 75% by 2030. We’ve seen many advancements contributing to the growth of the renewable energy market, due to the convergence […]

Many people who believe we need a “Green New Deal” will say that Earth faces an existential catastrophe that could cut short the lives of young people who are living now. But if nuclear energy is mentioned

Since the inception of the nuclear era more than 70 years ago, federal taxpayers have been bailing out nuclear power plants and keeping the industry afloat with endless, costly subsidies. Yet, the industry is