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Texas’ Power Grid Set for Now But Future Less Certain

Via The Houston Chronicle: Last month was the second warmest May on record in Texas, and forecasts for this summer indicate we’ll be hitting above-average temperatures. At the same time, Texas’ population is growing twice as fast as the nation’s, driven in part by the more than 1,000 people per day who are moving here […]

America Needs Coal and Nuclear Power for Energy Diversity

Via The Tribune-Democrat: 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 is […]

National View: Americans Support Shoring Up Strained U.S. Power Grid

Via The Duluth News Tribune: It often appears that the American people have more good horse sense than Washington. Case in point: right now, Beltway pundits are busily critiquing the Trump administration’s proposal to shore up baseload power in the U.S. while, at the same time, according to a new poll, a majority of Americans […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 — […]

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 […]