Commentary

By Kennedy Maize
Congress will make a big mistake if it provides money for accelerated wind power development as part of the Obama administration’s new economic stimulus program, according to veteran energy analyst Glenn Schleede. Instead, he says in a recent privately-published paper, “Investment in energy efficient light bulbs would save more than five times as much electricity in five years as an equal dollar investment in wind turbine would produce in 20 years.”

Meeting growing energy demand while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is one of the most critical challenges facing our world today.

By Kennedy Maize
The Obama administration has picked Steven Chu, currently the director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be secretary of energy. The selection was quite a surprise, as Chu’s name had not surfaced in any of the rumors circulating in Washington. Indeed, he’s not well know in Washington political circles.

Europe has seen tremendous activity in the development of renewable energy as a response to climate change. As a result, some of the most important renewable energy firms operating in the U.S. are based in Denmark, Germany, and Spain. Stable, high-level policy is one reason Europe dominates this sector.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, just released its report on the status of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology and its view of the technology’s future development challenges. In general, the GAO concludes that the technology faces grave technological, regulatory, economic, and legal barriers that will not be […]

Roger Feldman
Proposed U.S. legislation appears likely to use carbon offsets or credits, although the details remain unclear. I wonder if these schemes adequately support the goal of global greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, just released its report on the status of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology and its view of the technology’s future development challenges. In general, the GAO concludes that the technology faces grave technological, regulatory, economic, and legal barriers that will not be easily overcome.

In the 1980s, Houston wildcatter George Mitchell drilled the first well into the Barnett Shale formation that stretches through north and central Texas. He tapped into what would turn out to be one of the most prolific and valuable onshore natural gas reserves in the United States.

The United States is used to transporting fuels to electric generation centers that are close to where the power supply is needed. We see trains carry coal by the carload from resource-rich areas to generation centers across the country. Natural gas is distributed through pipelines. Even uranium is transported to supply our nuclear stations. However, […]

Kennedy Maize
Desperate to score points in a crucial state where they are in the double-digit dumps, the Republican McCain-Palin presidential ticket rolled out their heartfelt support for “clean coal technologies” at a rally in Scranton, Pa., this week.

Though former New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer may be remembered for one type of indecent exposure, the current New York attorney general is promoting a more damaging type of indecent exposure for coal-fired power plant owners.

The already razor-thin power supply margins in the UK are likely to become nearly transparent by 2012, according to a new study prepared by Fells Associates: “A Pragmatic Energy Policy for the UK” (PDF). The report notes that the UK’s electricity shortfall will blossom to between 30 GW and 35 GW by 2027, and residents should expect periods when demand exceeds supply in just three years. If you think the UK government is worried, think again.

Just when you thought coal was down for the count, here’s a report from London’s Financial Times. “British coal production looks set to grow for the first time since 2001, thanks to higher prices and power generators’ new-found appreciation of domestic coal supplies.” Coal production in the UK mostly has been falling since the 1950s.

As oil prices soar and power prices threaten to follow, our republic’s mix of diverse cultural and economic interests must cooperate to achieve our common goal of energy self-sufficiency. Those interests seem to fall into one of four main groups—policy, corporate, finance, and technical innovation—each seeking to control the direction of our nation on major […]

Opponents of massive new energy taxes and regulations breathed a small sigh of relief in June when the Lieberman-Warner climate-tax bill went down in flames on the Senate floor. Even 10 Democrats broke with the party and voted against it, writing that they would have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately, power-mad bureaucrats at […]

By Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
The fallout from the Supreme Court’s April 2, 2007, decision (Massachusetts v. Duke Energy) in which the high court ruled that the EPA does have the right to regulate CO₂ emissions as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act (CAA) continues. The court also ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon emissions from automobiles and other vehicles—and, by extension, power plants (my words, not the court’s).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that is it well on its way to regulating at least 85% of the energy used in America in the name of global warming (never mind the fact that temperatures have inexplicably not increased since at least 2001). If the proposal is enacted, any organization or person that emits more than miniscule amounts of CO₂ will be required to obtain a permit, effectively bringing our economy to its knees in short order.

By Kennedy Maize
Stymied in its plans for new coal-fired generation, Florida’s Jacksonville Energy Authority is moving to natural gas. . . .
For several years, JEA was heavily involved in a multiple-utility plan for a $2.3 billion, 800-MW coal-fired plant to meet the region’s rapidly-growing electricity demand. But Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist (rumored to be on presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s vice presidential short list) clobbered the project and imposed a 20% renewable energy mandate on Florida utilities. “I worked on that for three years. In a flash of an eye, it got cancelled,” JEA project manager Mike Lawson told the Florida Times-Union.

Is Al Gore out of his mind? Or is he simply issuing a difficult challenge that he knows can’t be met, but will stimulate the country toward a positive effort?

It’s hard to tell, given his speech in Washington last week, calling for the U.S. to replace all – that’s 100 percent, folks – of its electric generation with renewables in a decade. We’re talking 2018 here.

After almost eight years, the Bush administration’s approach to air pollution policy—including global warming—ends up with bupkus. That’s a wonderfully-useful Yiddish word meaning, literally, “nothing,” but implying less than nothing, or the meaningless result of lots of apparent, but futile, effort.

By Jim Rogers, Duke Energy Corp. The climate change debate has been dramatized in movies, on Hollywood’s red carpets, and in documentaries featuring melting ice caps. The collective effect is extraordinary, and positive. America now stands ready to address one of its toughest challenges since the industrial revolution—decarbonizing our energy supply and economy. Now the […]

Earlier this month, blogger and Contributing Editor Kennedy Maize took a look at some significant developments on the coal front, including the fate of proposed new plants in Indiana and Kansas and the booming demand for coal mine workers.

By Editor-in-Chief Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
Zhou Dadi, director general (emeritus) of the Energy Research Institute at China’s National Development and Reform Commission, recently spoke at a panel discussion sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Zhou boasted that China has set aggressive short-term goals for improved energy efficiency and that his country understands that it needs to make significant reductions of CO₂ in the future. This is a remarkable statement considering that China installed over 100 GW of new coal-fired generation in 2006 and another 75 GW in 2007.

Welcome to our new format for COAL POWER, brought to you by the editors of POWER magazine. This new web site and “webzine” contains in-depth information specifically for the coal-fired power generation market.

By Kennedy Maize
It’s counterintuitive. But it now appears that Democratic presidential (almost) nominee Barack Obama is Big Oil’s best friend in Washington.

I believe there are three basic objectives for the energy industry in the modern era. First, to provide a reliable and ample supply. Second, to ensure that the supply is provided at the least cost to consumers. And third, to accomplish the first and second objectives with the least possible adverse effects on the environment. […]

In mid-2006, a Google search of the term “Smart Grid” generated around 2,000 responses. The same search this past month yielded more than 500,000 hits from a wide variety of sources. The explosiveness of the concept is especially interesting because there is no universal agreement on what constitutes a smart grid—much less agreement on what […]

The advent of the Smart Grid will bring a new driver for value creation to the electric power industry: economies of connection. In the future, the Smart Grid may offer our industry improved returns more typical of Internet-based businesses like eBay, Amazon, and Google to replace the diminishing returns typical of traditional “steel in the […]

By J. Bennett Johnston It is fashionable these days for policymakers, particularly those running for office, to somberly suggest that America needs an energy policy—thus implying that America has no energy policy. As one of the prime architects of an energy policy that has served America well, I could not disagree more. The fact that […]

Chances are good that legislation to “cap and auction” greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will become law as early as 2009. While many environmentalists, utilities, and energy companies agree that cap and auction is the right framework, huge differences remain. Environmentalists want an 80% reduction of GHG emissions by 2050, or sooner. Energy companies want more […]