27Jun

Rebalance the Electricity Marketplace

For those opposed to government intervention to ensure grid reliability, the rallying cry has sounded something like: “How dare you interfere in the free market?” What free energy market are these critics talking about? As Hollman Jenkins Jr. recently observed in The Wall Street Journal, “Energy decisions are already highly politicized.” He continues, “That’s the […]
25Jun

Let’s Not Get Rid of Coal Power Just Yet

Via The Clarion Ledger: In the face of rising electricity demand, Energy Secretary Rick Perry recently unveiled a plan to preserve some of the nation’s key coal and nuclear power plants. It’s a sensible move since the nation’s power grid can’t rely solely on natural gas, wind, and solar. What America’s families and businesses need […]
22Jun

Washington State Should Stop Blocking Planned Coal Export Terminal

Via The New York Times: In their 2007 book, “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy,” then-Representative Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks made their opposition to coal abundantly clear. Boldly stating that coal is “killing us,” their treatise was just the beginning of a yearslong public campaign by Mr. Inslee against fossil fuels. Now, as the governor of […]
21Jun

America Needs Coal and Nuclear Power for Energy Diversity

Via The Rockland County Times: In the face of rising electricity demand, Energy Secretary Rick Perry recently unveiled a plan to preserve some of the nation’s key coal and nuclear power plants. It’s a sensible move since the nation’s power grid can’t rely solely on natural gas, wind, and solar. What America’s families and businesses […]
20Jun

It’s Past Time to Align Energy Policy with Energy Reality

Coal’s much-publicized decline isn’t a decline at all. Coal plant retirements in the U.S. and some parts of Europe have created a narrative that coal is in irreversible global retreat. The data tell a different story. The oil and gas giant BP’s recently released annual Statistical Review of World Energy offers an important reality check […]
19Jun

Coal and Nuclear are Hedges Against Volatile Natural Gas Prices

Via The Daily Sentinel:  Imagine American consumers trying to make ends meet under the weight of soaring natural gas and electricity prices. Anyone who thinks this country no longer faces the threat of runaway energy prices should consider that almost 115,000 megawatts of “base-load” electricity-generating capacity from coal plants has been shuttered since 2010 — […]
13Jun

The World is More Uncertain Than You Think

Nobel Laurette Daniel Kahneman, the author of the best-selling Thinking, Fast and Slow, offered some sage advice to investment professionals at the CFA Institute’s recent annual conference. According to the institute’s blog, Kahneman said: “When something happens, you immediately understand how it happens. You immediately have a story and an explanation. You have that sense […]
13Jun

Save Coal and Nuclear Power — We Might Need It

Via The Deseret News: There is nothing more important for future electrical power in the United States than whether, in the wake of an enormous loss of baseload power due to overregulation in recent years, our country preserves financially stressed nuclear and coal plants for essential baseload power. Although the Trump administration has taken steps […]
11Jun

The Government Has Placed Lead Shoes on the Coal Industry

Via The Washington Post:  Catherine Rampell’s June 5 op-ed, “A new kind of ‘free market’,” revealed a glaring misunderstanding of the electricity market and the dynamics that have pushed well-operating coal and nuclear power plants into early retirement. Far from being free, the electricity marketplace has been shaped by overzealous regulation and enormous subsidies for […]