General

When it comes to future electricity supply, the Obama administration is engaged in an implicit con game. Whether the president knows this, which I doubt, there must be smart people in his circle who understand that the promises he makes about renewable energy simply don’t stand up to the delusions they create. Those people are […]

I’m a George Orwell fanatic. I own, and display proudly in my office, every book he wrote (Homage to Catalonia is the best), every Orwell (1903-1950) biography, and every critical study of his work. I also have the four-volume edited collection of his works, compiled by his widow, Sonia Orwell, and their friend and collaborator […]

By Kennedy Maize When it comes to access for transmission lines to bring renewable power from where it is located to folks who can use it, who poses the biggest obstacles? In the West, according to Pedro J. Pizarro, Southern California Edison’s vice president of power operations, a chief villain is Uncle Sam. Federal land […]

By Kennedy Maize Princeton physicist Will Happer, a prominent skeptic about man-made global warming, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Feb. 25 that the earth is in a “CO2 famine,” and more atmospheric carbon dioxide would be a very good thing indeed. “Almost never have CO2 levels been as low” as in the […]

By Kennedy Maize Yucca Mountain is stretched out on its deathbed. Earlier this month, the nuclear industry effectively agreed that the plan to bury spent nuclear reactor fuel under the Nevada mountain on federal government property is ready for political last rites. At meetings with Wall Street analysts and state utility regulators in February, leaders […]

By Kennedy Maize Here’s a delicious irony. In South Carolina, an iconic former Republican governor and the current Republican governor, who reportedly has presidential ambitions, are feuding over a coal-fired power plant proposed by the state government’s own electric utility. Most intriguing is that the former governor, oral surgeon Jim Edwards, 81, Ronald Reagan’s first […]

By Kennedy Maize “Stimulus” has become the universal political solvent in Washington since the advent of the Obama administration. No matter what narrow special interest, no matter what piece of local pork or advocacy policy preference, it all gets dissolved and incorporated into the administration’s stimulus package. You call it “stimulus.” I call it “earmarks.” […]

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 […]

By Kennedy Maize A retired Entergy Co. executive, who has loads of hands-on operating experience at nuclear power plants, is a major contender for an open seat on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Daniel F. Packer Jr., 61, who was the first African-American to manage a U.S. nuclear power plant (Entergy’s Waterford plant), confirmed to […]

By Kennedy Maize Spare me the hype about electric cars. Allegedly “green” technology was a theme at the latest Detroit auto show, as chronicled by the New York Times last Sunday. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Been there, done that, didn’t work. In the early 1980s, electric cars were going to be the way to […]