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Coal Bankruptcies Pile Up as Utilities Embrace Gas, Renewables
More than half a dozen large U.S. coal companies have filed for bankruptcy in the past year, a signal that the one-time king of American energy is fading as it faces competition from cheap natural gas and renewable-energy sources while reckoning with the retirement of coal-fired power plants. At least seven coal producers—including Westmoreland Coal Co. , Cloud Peak Energy Inc., Blackhawk Mining LLC and Blackjewel LLC—have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy since October 2018 and more companies could be following them to court. Murray Energy Corp., the largest private coal company in the U.S., and Foresight Energy LP recently entered forbearance agreements on interest payments to loans, starting the clock on restructuring negotiations. [ read more … ]
FERC
Pointing to ‘perverse incentive’ under Order 1000, FERC’s Glick calls for changes
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s 2011 order meant to promote greater regional transmission development and competition is not working as intended and is worth examining for potential fixes, according to Commissioner Richard Glick. In October 10 remarks at a wind industry conference, Glick said a build-out of transmission to access sun- and wind-rich areas is needed to meet lofty clean and renewable energy goals set by states and the private sector. FERC’s Order 1000 tried to get utilities and regions to work better to plan, and presumably, build more of the long-distance transmission needed to carry renewables from remote areas, he said. [ read more … ]
Policy & Politics
BLM chief: Banning oil and gas is ‘absolutely insane’
Bureau of Land Management acting chief William Perry Pendley today slammed calls by some Democratic presidential contenders to ban oil and gas leasing on federal lands. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is among the candidates who have called for such a ban. Doing so would be “absolutely devastating, not just to the American West, but to the entire country,” said Pendley, who was speaking at a panel discussion at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. [ read more … ]
Grid operator reports latest record for renewables used to meet energy demenads
The Southwest Power announced Friday on Twitter that it met its load requirement on the regional transmission grid it operates using a record 73.67% of energy generated by renewable resources at 2:14 a.m. on Oct. 9. The grid had a load for needed energy of about 22.5 gigawatts at the time, and renewable sources in play, consisting of mostly wind with some hydro-generation, supplied about 16.5 gigawatts of that, officials said. [ read more … ]
Editorials
‘The Cigarette’ Review: No Smoking, Please
The political philosopher Kenneth Minogue, in his classic study “The Liberal Mind” (1963), memorably compared modern liberalism in its prime to St. George slaying the dragon. From the 16th century to the 19th, the dragons were enormous: religious intolerance, slavery and the slave trade, wretched prison conditions. But liberalism, unlike St. George, did not know when to retire, and in the 20th century it “grew breathless in [its] pursuit of smaller and smaller dragons—for the big dragons were now harder to come by.” The cigarette was one of those small dragons, but a decrepit liberalism has laid it low. Sarah Milov’s “The Cigarette: A Political History” tells the story of how this happened, taking us from the rise of the tobacco industry in the Southeastern United States in the 19th century to the protracted court battles that nearly obliterated cigarette manufacturers in the 1990s and early 2000s. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.