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Trump Said to Mull 2015 Grid Emergency Law to Save Coal Plants
The Trump administration is weighing a broad array of strategies for keeping coal and nuclear power plants online as a matter of national security, with options ranging from invoking a 68-year-old law to a three-year-old one, according to a senior Energy Department official. Members of the National Security Council agree that something must be done to ensure the long-term reliability and resiliency of the nation’s electric grid, said the official, who asked to speak anonymously about internal deliberations. [ read more … ]
High values are blowing in offshore winds; policymakers may need more
Offshore wind attracted as much attention at the just-completed national wind energy conference as a Kardashian at a trendy Hollywood night spot. New numbers show its value warrants the attention. Building wind turbines to operate in harsh ocean conditions costs more and takes longer than building on land. The permitting process can be rigorous and lengthy. Construction requires special vessels and equipment and interconnection requires subsea engineering. [ read more … ]
Policy & Politics
Why the offshore wind industry is about to take off
There are only six wind turbines operating in U.S. waters today. But that will likely soon change, partly because of states with ambitious offshore wind targets.
Massachusetts, for example, is about to pick one of the three bids it got from companies vying to build one of the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farms. [ read more … ]
Trump mulls new global institution to promote fossil fuels
The Trump administration is considering forming “a new, central institution” to advocate for natural gas and coal technology and exports, according to a document E&E News obtained from an administration source. The draft talking points on a “Clean and Advanced Fossil Fuel Alliance,” which were labeled pre-decisional, build on what had to this point been described as a loose affiliation of countries the United States is courting. [ read more … ]
Shell Spreads Its Bets Around as It Prepares for a Greener Future
There seems to be little about the scrappy energy company in central England that would appeal to Royal Dutch Shell, the button-down oil giant. The little company, First Utility, is an upstart challenger. It offers friendly customer service, and low prices on electricity and natural gas. But it doesn’t own any power plants or gas pipelines; First Utility is a virtual energy company — the product of technological advancement and deregulation. [ read more … ]
Ernest Moniz, David Terry to Introduce 2018 Energy Jobs Report
The National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) and the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) will publicly release the 2018 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER). This is the third installment of the energy jobs survey established by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2016, which offers data on employment trends in four key energy sectors: Electric Power Generation and Fuels; Transmission, Distribution and Storage; Energy Efficiency; and Motor Vehicles. [ read more … ]
The shifting winds of Cory Gardner
Cory Gardner, the junior senator from Colorado and head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is addressing a crowd of factory workers clad in blue work shirts and orange hard hats. They wouldn’t look out of place among the coal miners and oil field hands who pack President Trump’s rallies. This isn’t one of those rallies, however, as is made clear when Gardner offers a full-throated defense of the production tax credit, a federal subsidy for wind energy. The crowd claps in hearty approval. [ read more … ]
Are electric cars worse for the environment?
It all might make sense if electric vehicles, as their supporters claim, were truly likely to reduce air pollution and tackle climate change. But are they? To answer that question, I used the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s most recent long-term forecasts for the number of new electric vehicles through 2050, estimated how much electricity they’d use, and then figured out how much pollution that electricity would generate, looking at three key pollutants regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act—sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), and particulates—as well as CO2 emissions. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.