Don’t count coal out when it comes to the down-and-dirty details of the energy marketplace, despite the political rhetoric coming from Washington-based environmental groups, many in Congress, and the Obama…
Legal & Regulatory
FERC, energy markets, reliability, natural gas delivery
Plug-in hybrid cars could get a boost from new technology developed at the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). But they could also add electric demand that could crash the…
Where’s the best place to work in the federal government? The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), according to U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). According to the OPM’s “Federal Human…
“Faith” is generally defined as the belief in things that are unseen. Using that definition, many utility-industry managers and leaders apparently consider customer satisfaction the ultimate faith-based initiative. They may…
In the 1990s, alarm bells were sounded because the construction of electric transmission infrastructure was not keeping pace with the United States’ rapidly increasing electric demand. More than 10 years…
One of the key features of the highly touted 2005 Energy Policy Act was a large pool of loan guarantees designed to jump-start a renaissance in nuclear power in the…
The $410 billion catchall government spending bill that Congress passed and president Obama signed last month includes more than $98 million in project earmarks for the U.S. Department of Energy,…
It’s not a pleasant time to be an electric utility regulator, as a daylong conference in March at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington demonstrated. Regulators at the…
President Obama promoted "green energy" as a signature theme in his presidential campaign. During his first weeks, he reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to renewable resources. In a radio address, he…
Power plant managers are familiar with selective catalytic reduction (SCR), a technology to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides from fossil-fueled generating plants. The regulatory battle over SCR was a key…