New York

28Aug

Modeling the Impossible

One of the common refrains from renewable boosters or even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is that the U.S. now has the technology needed to rapidly transform our electricity mix and maintain affordable, reliable power. In other words, the renewable technology available today can replace the dispatchable power currently provided by the nation’s coal, […]
07Aug

Soaring Costs with Little to Show

With all the noise surrounding the energy transition, sometimes it’s hard to grasp what’s truly happening, or not happening at all. Is the shift to renewable power and the infrastructure to support it moving smoothly? Or is it proving far more challenging and costly than advocates want to admit? What’s happening in California, New York […]
07Sep

Stumbling out of the Blocks

With the perilous state of the nation’s electricity supply increasingly in the spotlight, the Biden administration has attempted to justify its regulatory blitz on the coal and gas fleets by pointing to what it hopes will be a lightning-fast renewable energy buildout. According to the administration’s narrative, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its largess […]
21Sep

Picking the Wrong Bridge

Dispatchable fuel diversity has long provided a shield to electricity consumers from fuel price spikes. But that optionality is eroding in much of the U.S. – or is already gone – as the coal fleet is pushed off the grid. Years of warnings about the potential pain to consumers should natural gas prices spike, and […]
16Feb

Creating Our Own Energy Crisis

Perhaps the greatest challenge of the energy transition is timing the installation of the infrastructure and generating capacity required for our energy future in parallel with – or more quickly – than we are dismantling our current electricity mix and the affordability and reliability it underpins. Unfortunately, it’s a challenge policymakers either seem not to […]
08Dec

The Grid Crisis is International

The grid reliability warnings keep coming. Both here and in Europe, electricity grids – particularly those that have raced away from dispatchable fuel diversity and allowed their reserve margins to erode – are facing ever-mounting warnings that available capacity may not keep up with demand. In the U.K., the national grid operator issued its first […]
18Nov

Pennsylvania is Flirting with Self-Imposed Energy Disaster

Americans can’t afford to pay more for electricity, especially with millions out of work in the midst of pandemic-induced economic upheaval. Yet, higher electricity costs and economic turmoil are coming if lawmakers continue to pursue policies that mandate an aggressive pivot away from existing baseload power to intermittent, more expensive alternatives. Pennsylvania is now on […]
05Feb

A Warning to Proceed with Caution

What’s the cost of inaction to protect the fuel diversity of our grid? New York offers a hint. The Empire State may have only two coal-fired power plants remaining, but a new rule aimed at effectively eliminating coal power from the state’s grid by 2020 is already jolting markets. As Bloomberg reported, the rule hasn’t […]