Legislative

In a long-awaited study of electricity markets and grid reliability, the Department of Energy has called out natural gas as the No. 1 reason for retirements of coal and nuclear plants, breaking from the Trump administration’s prior talking point blaming regulations and renewables for the nation’s shrinking coal and nuclear fleets. The report attributes four […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) again has a working quorum after the U.S. Senate confirmed Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson as new members August 3. FERC had been without a quorum since February 2017 when Commissioner Norman Bay resigned, and with only one member after Collette Honorable left the agency at the end of […]

Several factors favor natural gas when it comes to the future of U.S. power generation. But other forces, such as power demand, energy efficiency, and the impact of renewables, make it a complex fray. Let’s

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a $528 million cut to its funding under the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill reported out of committee July 18. While Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee expressed disappointment in the deep cut, it could have been worse. The Trump administration’s budget request, released in late May, proposed […]

In negotiating the Senate’s fiscal year 2018 (FY18) Energy and Water (E&W) Development Appropriation’s bill, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on energy and water development, had no time for President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to the Department of Energy budget. “We started with an unrealistic budget proposal from the president. […]

A federal judge has let stand Illinois’ zero-emission credit (ZEC) program, dismissing challenges filed by power producers who said the initiative subsidizes nuclear power at the expense of other resources. Judge Manish S. Shah of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on July 14 ruled in favor of motions by the […]

House of Representatives appropriators July 12 took up their responses to President Donald Trump’s controversial fiscal year 2018 (FY18) budget requests for the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Both bills were favorably reported out of their respective markups. The House FY18 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, which funds DOE, came […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has announced plans to reintroduce legislation called the FUTURE Act, which would extend and expand the federal 45Q tax credit for carbon dioxide capture and sequestration. The bill has the support of both fossil fuel companies and environmental groups. At present, the 45Q provision awards $10 per metric ton […]

Behold, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): Cheryl LaFleur, chairman and sole commissioner. Thanks to a largely feckless Trump administration, the five-member FERC now consists of only one member, leaving the commission, an important energy infrastructure agency, continued partially crippled for lack of a quorum. FERC has been hobbled since early February, when Trump demoted […]

Although President Trump has been promoting a pro-coal energy agenda, there are four things killing coal that the administration may not be able to remedy. That was the message Bill Ritter Jr. delivered to American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Power and Energy Conference & Exhibition attendees during his keynote address on June 27. Ritter […]