General

By Thomas W. Overton, JD As unlikely as it might have seemed a few months ago, recent developments in the ongoing saga over the beleaguered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) have begun to raise the previously unthinkable possibility that the plant may never restart. Publicly, of course, the authorities are saying nothing of the […]

By Kennedy Maize (@kennedymaize) Washington, D.C., 9 September 2012 — If you are looking for direction on what energy policy and politics in the U.S. might look like after the November election, don’t expect much guidance from the two party platforms. Nor have the contenders had much of substance to say on the topic. Given […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., 6 August 2012 — It’s been a rough road for nuclear advocates in the U.S. of late, although nothing seems to dent the Pollyanna armor of the nuclear crowd, always appearing to believe a revival is just over the horizon and headed into view. Here are a few fraught developments […]

By Kennedy Maize (@kennedymaize) Washington, D.C., 31 July 2012 – What to make of the two successive, horrendous electric power failures in India? The smart money avoids conclusory leaps. When the first cascading blackout hit on Monday, there was much media chatter about generating capacity. The implication was that the outage was demand-driven. But there […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., July 14, 2012 — A group of mainstream conservatives and representatives from Washington environmental groups have been meeting over recent weeks to revive the idea of a U.S. carbon tax as a way to combat alleged man-made global warming. The aim is to have a package of proposed laws to […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., June 26, 2012 – Pardon my déjà vu, but an article in Monday’s Washington Post, citing a study of how the Interior Department’s coal leasing program in the Powder River Basin is mismanaged, takes me back 30 years. The study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis claims […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., June 25, 2012 – When it comes to electric infrastructure, no state is more dysfunctional than California. That observation, based on many years of observing the twists and turns of California electricity policy, is highlighted by the problems the state now faces with the possibility of the San Onofre nuclear […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., June 17, 2012 — If the Obama administration is, as Republicans charge, the most anti-business administration in U.S. history, why is it doing everything it can to save publicly-traded uranium enrichment enterprise USEC from itself? Could Ohio have something to do with it? We are shocked, shocked, as shocked as […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., June 12, 2012 – It’s hard to cry the blues for a union worker at a nuclear power plant making $122,000 a year with a good health plan and a solid 401(k). That’s the situation of the average striking (or locked out, if you will) member of Local 369 of […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., 3 June 2012 — An international effort is underway to give control and governance of the Internet to a United Nations agency, with implications for ways that U.S. utilities might implement smart grid technologies. Led by Russia and China, the plan to turn the Internet over to the International Telecommunications […]