Blog

31Oct

A Ghostly Story

October 31, 2017 Here’s a scary thought for Halloween. Imagine you’re a well-paid Washington reporter covering, say, the environment and energy beat. You’ve reported on the colossal loss of coal jobs in Appalachia – more than 60,000 since 2010 [MISI consultants, Oct. 26] – and you wrote sympathetically about federal job training programs promised for […]
25Oct

Perry’s Angry Critics

October 25, 2017 It was the 17th century English playwright William Congreve who claimed “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Congreve never met the renewable fuels industry. Wind and solar proponents, feeling scorned by Energy Secretary Perry, reacted with righteous anger to his request that the Federal Energy Regulatory Corporation (FERC) allow utilities […]
18Oct

The Lesson from Luminant

October 18, 2017 Lately it seems that news, too, is in the eye of the beholder. The calamity brought by recent hurricanes – a calamity some greeted as evidence of climate change – was seen by others as evidence of grid vulnerability. Nature has become partisan. So it was last week. Reporters for the most […]
12Oct

Secretary Perry’s Socially Responsible Investing

October 12, 2017 The classic definition of arrogance is the guy who murders his parents and pleads for mercy as an orphan. We’re hearing echoes of this logic from critics of energy Secretary Perry’s proposal to value baseload power plants for the reliability they provide the grid. Any cost-of-service deal for merchant producers would be […]
11Oct

Much Ado About Nothing

October 11, 2017 There was predictable indignation but no surprise at the administration’s decision to withdraw the Clean Power Plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and this one certainly didn’t. But not just because the president and his voters opposed it. Because the CPP was, from the outset, more a political subterfuge to […]
06Oct

Two Power Plays Show Leadership

October 6, 2017 After eight years of federal regulations weighing heavily on coal, we have now had eight months of reasonable federal regulatory relief. And Trump’s critics are crying foul. In the past week, two bold attempts to bring energy policy back towards the neutral zone have been greeted with near hysteria. First, Secretary Perry’s […]
27Sep

Advancing Coal Technologies

September 27, 2017 From all the news coverage it’s getting, National Clean Energy Week appears to be a carefully kept secret, trumped by NFL protests, a Senate primary and Puerto Rico’s dystopia. That’s a pity. Exciting things are happening in clean energy technologies and the global market they serve. Renewables understandably get star billing in […]
20Sep

All the News Not Fit to Print

September 20, 2017 While Washington’s “war on coal” has ended – with this administration’s decision makers taking a fuel-neutral approach to regulation – the New York Times editorial board is nostalgic for the days of politicians picking winners and losers in the energy market. In what have now become weekly anti-coal tirades, the Times picks […]
12Sep

Weathering the Storms

September 12, 2017 Nature has rudely interrupted a static Beltway debate about grid reliability and the need for baseload power. The series of powerful storms swept through sprawling cities and Caribbean villages, annihilating every structure in their path. For hundreds of thousands of people impoverished by nature’s fury is now added the lack of electricity. […]
28Aug

The Oracle at DOE

August 28th, 2017 In Greek mythology, the Oracle at Delphi spoke so cryptically that both Athenians and rival Spartans could hear what they wanted to hear. Both sides found something to like. Secretary Perry’s staff’s study on grid “resilience” accomplished much the same thing. Call it Delphic wisdom. The renewable energy industry was relieved to […]