Blog

25Apr

When It Isn’t the Ships but the Fleet that Sinks

There’s a sudden change in the wind, and it isn’t spring. In the space of a week, far-sighted officials at FERC, at the Department of Energy and in Congress have shifted attention away from saving First Energy’s plants to saving the grid’s reliability. Under assault is the lazy assumption held by the “do-nothing” faction that […]
18Apr

Reduce Coal Emissions? “No” Say NGOs, “Yes” Say Voters

It’s too soon to be alarmed, but there may be an outbreak of common sense upon us.  Unless stopped by doctrinaire ideologues, recent signs of rare agreement on the energy front just might lead to actual progress. We refer first to the bipartisan support for “45Q” fossil energy technology tax credits. Then last week’s Senate […]
11Apr

RFF Sees the Heat But Not the Blast

Did ancient Pompeii decline because of the heat? Well, yes, heat had much to do with its evisceration. But if you don’t consider the role of Vesuvius you wouldn’t appreciate what happened to Nero’s favorite metropolis. That’s the problem we have with the findings of a report last week from Resources for the Future. In […]
05Apr

A Common Thread in the Climate Change Debate

EPA’s listening session last week in Gillette, Wyo. – the last of four – brought to an end the coast-to-coast listening sessions, extending from the San Francisco Bay to the Powder River Basin, on through West Virginia, where voices from all sides debated the EPA’s future regulation of carbon emissions. The final hearing was a […]
28Mar

In the Church of Climate Change, It Is Time for Heresy

The Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Coal Swarm make a compelling case in their newest report documenting the gradual decline in global coal capacity. Only it isn’t the case they wanted to make. If anything, the greens scored an own goal with conclusions that oddly confirm the futility of their current course. The annual report found that in […]
13Mar

Storm Warnings for the SS Grid

Have we successfully weathered doubts about grid resilience and reliability? We’ll know more after FERC digests the assessments from grid operators that were due Friday. But Beltway pundits appear to have already consigned fears over possible brownouts and rate hikes to yesterday’s news. The Department of Energy’s staff report concluded that the SS Grid was […]
28Feb

The Great Game 2018

Ever since the 19th century, when European powers vied for dominance in The Great Game, Central Asia and the Middle East have offered rival empires the prize of abundant natural resources. Armed conflict has often been the result. If Japan and Germany were resource self-sufficient, a second world war might have been avoided. Today the players […]
21Feb

The Iliad – A CPP Parable for Our Time

EPA has scheduled listening sessions on the Clean Power Plan (CPP) for today (Kansas City), next week (San Francisco, Calif.) and next month (Gillette, Wyo.), dragging the controversial carbon control machinery back in discussion. Stayed by the Supreme Court, the CPP’s fate now resides with EPA under new management. Although a decision to repeal and […]
14Feb

The New Luddites

If any further evidence is needed to substantiate widespread voter frustration with Washington gridlock, consider the current reaction to the administration’s infrastructure initiative.  “Infrastructure” improvement is as close as we’ll get to a bipartisan call to action. So what’s to complain about — except who will pay and how much? Now we know. Almost immediately […]
08Feb

Infrastructure – The Missing Link

Washington is now setting its fleeting sights on rebuilding infrastructure.On Monday the White House will unveil infrastructure “principles” that hopefully will add meat to the bones of the president’s initiative highlighted in his State of the Union address. This week both Senate and House committees examined aspects of energy and infrastructure. To “contextualize” this, the […]