04Feb

America Needs Advanced Technologies to Meet Future Energy Needs

Via Morning Consult: Here’s something to ponder: What will America’s energy landscape look like in 2050? Some are calling for a “deep electrification” of the U.S. economy, including the widespread deployment of electric vehicles and heat pumps. But the combination of EVs with a growing number of data centers and other digital infrastructure could mean […]
01Feb

America Should Better Utilize Advanced Coal

Via Forbes: Lest we forget: “Advancing the development of clean coal technologies is an important part of President Obama’s strategy to develop every source of American energy and ensure the United States leads the world in the global clean energy race and continues to take advantage of domestic resources here at home,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven […]
30Jan

The German Misstep

Strong voter support for an all-of-the-above energy strategy in the U.S. – as identified in recent Morning Consult polling – is undoubtedly informed by experience. Just ask Xcel Energy customers dealing with record subzero temperatures this week who were asked to turn their thermostats down to 55 degrees to prevent widespread natural gas outages in the area. […]
30Jan

DOE Fossil Head: New US Coal Plants ‘Quite Possible’

Via Utility Dive: Winberg’s Monday comments reflect a broad campaign at the Department of Energy to revive domestic coal generation, which has been battered by competition from natural gas and renewable resources. Late last year, DOE launched the Coal FIRST (Flexible, Innovative, Resilient, Small and Transformative) initiative, which seeks to design smaller, more flexible coal plants. This […]
30Jan

Rick Perry Braces for Outages from the Polar Vortex

Via The Washington Examiner:  Energy Secretary Rick Perry spoke with top energy security officials Tuesday as a deep freeze gripped the eastern half of the United States. Perry tweeted that he received an update from Karen Evans, the assistant secretary of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, known as CESER, on the […]
24Jan

Balancing the Grid and Reducing Emissions with Advanced Coal Technology

Preserving the fuel diversity and affordability of our power supply while also reducing emissions is not only smart energy policy, it’s a tall order. It’s a challenge not unlike walking a tight rope, and current trends suggest we are losing our balance. The loss of fuel-secure baseload sources of power and our growing overreliance on […]
18Jan

New York’s Plan to Kill Coal Is Already Boosting Power Prices

Via Bloomberg:  New York’s plan to put the state’s last coal-fired power plants out of business hasn’t even been approved yet and electricity is already trading like they’re shut. The price of power in 2021 in New York City and other regions surged more than 30 percent beginning in May. The only major difference between […]
16Jan

Better for Consumers? Hardly.

Baseload power plant retirements continue at an alarming pace. Plant operators retired 14,000 megawatts of coal generation in 2018, enough generating capacity to power about 10 million homes. Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. coal fleet has been forced into early retirement since 2010 and a third of the commercial U.S. nuclear fleet is in […]
10Jan

Coal Enters a New Era in 2019

Via TheSourthern.com: For those who follow energy policy in the United States, these are intriguing times. A number of significant changes are under way, with natural gas occupying a newfound prominence in electricity generation. Some older coal plants are being retired, too. And more utilities are exploring wind and solar even as nuclear power continues […]
09Jan

Reversing the Anti-Coal Supertanker

If anyone has ever told you, “it’s like turning a supertanker,” you know the task at hand isn’t going to be easy. The analogy beautifully captures the immense challenge of reversing momentum. For all the energy required to get that proverbial supertanker moving, it can be doubly difficult and slow to change its course. Reversing […]