Blog

01Oct

Coal’s Moment

This may be hard to digest for some, but the United States needs to ramp up both coal production and coal powered generation. As the coal fleet quietly and repeatedly proves itself to be a critically important tool to address eroding grid reliability during times of maximum demand, it’s past time to recognize the value […]
17Sep

Can West Virginia Come to the Rescue?

“We must become the indispensable battery of the nation,” West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey said last week when he announced a plan to expand the state’s generating capacity to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2050 from roughly 15 GW today. Morrisey’s plan, called “50 by 50,” envisions not just an effort to maintain West Virginia’s existing […]
10Sep

Can We Win the AI Race and Shield Consumers from Rising Power Prices?

Every week brings more news about surging power demand, rising electricity prices and the need for more dispatchable power. Political frustration with rising prices is beginning to collide with the desire to win the AI race and build the data center infrastructure needed to support this remarkable technological moment. In the latest sign of the […]
03Sep

Powering the AI Moment

Big tech’s scramble to deploy ever-larger data centers—each with the electricity needs of entire cities or states—to serve AI is rapidly transforming electricity markets and our electricity grid.    As The Wall Street Journal recently observed, utilities are receiving requests for extraordinary amounts of power: “Take American Electric Power, a big utility that serves 11 […]
27Aug

China’s Abundance Agenda

China continues to chart its own energy path, positioning the industrial giant remarkably well for the age of electrification and the voracious energy appetite of AI. While the West was tearing down baseload generation in favor of the promise of renewable energy – leading to mounting reliability concerns and a European energy crisis following Russia’s […]
20Aug

Natural Gas Prices are Rising. Can Coal Soften the Blow?

America’s natural gas abundance – an economic and industrial boon – has also now become a deeply concerning consumer vulnerability. Gas is the leading fuel for electricity generation, heating and manufacturing, and the U.S. has now also become the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) exporter with U.S. LNG export capacity set to double by […]
13Aug

Planned Coal Plant Retirements Crash into Energy Reality

Utilities are grappling with an unshakeable reality: they can’t meet soaring power demand without the existing coal capacity they have. One after another, utilities are dropping plans to close plants or are kicking retirements far down the road. Deliberately removing dispatchable capacity from grids at the same time they are facing record breaking—and growing—electricity demands, […]
06Aug

J.H. Campbell Comes to the Rescue in MISO

When Secretary of Energy Chris Wright used emergency authority to extend the life of the J.H Campbell coal plant in Michigan at the end of May, the decision was met with a broadside of a criticism. To the anti-coal crowd, the move was a bail out, a solution in search of a problem and a […]
30Jul

“It is actually here now”

“The reliability threat is not on the future horizon,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman (FERC) Mark Christie said last week. “It is actually here now.” Christie, who was overseeing his last FERC meeting before departing the commission, was responding to results from PJM’s recent capacity auction—an auction that for the first time came up short […]
24Jul

The AI Power Surge is Here and Coal is Essential to Meeting It

Big tech’s scramble to deploy ever-larger data centers to serve AI has become the electricity elephant in the room. Across the country, power demand is soaring, and data centers with the energy needs of entire cities – and even states – are driving the surge. Meeting this new demand will require new generation but also […]