15Jun

The Nation Braces for Blackouts

Warnings of blackouts this summer are quickly becoming a dangerous reality for much of the country In the Midwest, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which manages the region’s grid, issued a warning of tight capacity conditions on June 13 as the grid struggles to keep up with soaring demand from a heatwave. Utilities were […]
08Jun

U.S. Coal to Europe

Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, recently warned that the current global energy crisis is in fact bigger than the oil crises of the 1970s and 80s. “Now we have an oil crisis, a gas crisis and an electricity crisis at the same time,” he said. He also warned it’s likely to last […]
08Jun

Opinion: Think things are bad under Biden? Get ready for the blackouts.

Via The Washington Post: First came the worst border crisis in U.S. history. Then came the worst inflation in four decades and record-high gas prices. Then came the baby formula shortage. Next up? Blackouts. That’s right, just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, add rolling blackouts to the rolling disasters President Biden has unleashed […]
03Jun

Red-Hot Coal Prices Threaten Even Higher Power Bills

Via The Wall Street Journal: Natural gas isn’t the only power-plant fuel on fire this year. Thermal-coal prices have soared from Appalachia to Australia, threatening more increases in manufacturing costs and power bills this summer. Futures for coal delivered to northwestern Europe have risen 137% so far this year, to $323.50 a metric ton as of […]
02Jun

A summer of blackouts? Wheezing power grid leaves states at risk.

Via The Washington Post: The nation’s power grid is under stress like never before, with regulators warning that the kind of rolling outages that are now familiar to California and Texas could be far more widespread as hot summer weather arrives. A large swath of the Midwest that has enjoyed stable electricity for decades is […]
01Jun

Facing Grid Unreliability Reality

Summer heat has arrived and for too many families there’s deep concern over whether they can afford to stay cool or whether the grid is going to hold up when they need it most. With natural gas prices nearly three times what they were last year, electricity prices soaring and startling warnings about eroding grid […]
25May

Soaring Energy Prices are Swallowing Economic Recovery

Contrasting the painful immediacy of an oil price shock to that from electricity prices, Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas wrote, “akin to a rising tide, it is slow but relentless and then, surprise, you are overwhelmed.” Blas penned that description about the crushing electricity costs about to overwhelm Europe, but the metaphor neatly describes the electricity crisis […]
25May

Don’t write off coal. We need it to ensure power grid reliability

Via The Hill: Weather forecasters predict a long, hot summer for most of the United States, with significant implications for the nation’s electric power grids. For example, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the regulatory authority that oversees grid operations in the U.S. and Canada, recently warned that the entire West and many areas of the […]
18May

As Natural Gas Prices Soar, a Plea for Energy Pragmatism

In the wake of stunning blackouts in California in August of 2020, California Assemblyman Jim Patterson said, “today we have a grid that is increasingly expensive, unreliable and unavailable when the people of California need it the most.” What Mr. Patterson didn’t know at the time is that his remark would soon describe nearly the […]
17May

America’s power grid is facing real trouble

Via The Salem News: There are two reasons why consumers experience a power outage. The first is obvious: a storm comes along and knocks down trees and power lines. That’s what typically happens. But there’s now a second reason for power outages in the United States–there simply isn’t enough electricity to go around. Power generation […]