Blog

14Dec

American Manufacturers Warn Against Coal Retirements

U.S. natural gas prices have tripled in a year, and promises of its abundance are now being replaced by growing concerns of scarcity as demand outpaces interstate pipeline capacity. Supply chokepoints and regional price premiums are emerging across the country and it’s a problem poised to get far worse as more essential coal generating capacity […]
07Dec

Sailing into the Dark Doldrums

Europe’s energy crisis is finally getting its first real test. Winter has arrived and despite full gas inventories and aggressive action to slash energy demand, there’s a palpable sense across the continent that the lights staying on will come down to the weather. As Bloomberg’s commodities columnist, Javier Blas, recently observed, “The problem is, energy […]
30Nov

The Grid Reliability Crisis Keeps Getting Worse

The nation’s electricity grid regulators at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) must be exasperated. The reliability of the grid is rapidly eroding, driven to the edge by a mismanaged and haphazard energy transition, and they’re doing their best to urgently warn anyone who will listen that the nation desperately needs a policy reset […]
16Nov

A Vote for Realistic Energy Policy

Last week, we covered President Biden’s speech made in California in which he boasted that “we’re going to be shutting these (coal) plants down all across America.” The comment was remarkable in its apparent disregard for the loss of high-paying American jobs such a move would cause, the seeming indifference to the record electricity prices […]
07Nov

The President Doubles Down on Bad Policy

When President Biden boasted last week about closing coal plants all across the country, he meant it. The White House has already begun spinning and clarifying his remarks, but the President knew what he was saying because there’s a plan to do it. Even as electricity and natural gas bills soar – up a startling 16% […]
02Nov

Can the U.S. Learn from China?

For all the activist handwringing over domestic climate policy, for all the soup thrown on priceless works of art or the trepidation of European governments to turn back on a handful of coal plants in the face of an unprecedented energy crisis, the climate story is increasingly coming down to one country. China is piloting […]
26Oct

Regulatory Intransigence

What changes over the course of four years? Not much if you compare President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to its predecessor from the Obama era. Team Biden came into office determined to pick up right where the Obama EPA had left off, hellbent on using every tool available to dismantle the domestic coal fleet. […]
20Oct

Cold, Dark and Expensive

Surging energy prices are colliding with renewed grid reliability concerns this winter. While the price at the gas pump has garnered the lion’s share of attention over the past few months, the rising price of electricity and the surging price of natural gas are putting new wind in the sails of energy-driven inflation that reached […]
12Oct

Transatlantic Energy Negligence

The months of warnings about energy rationing and the threat of blackouts in Europe are about to be put to the test. Winter is quickly approaching and there’s growing discomfort from policymakers that while much was done to prepare for a winter without Russian energy perhaps it was too little, too late. The European Union […]
05Oct

Sweater Weather

It’s getting cold out there. And across energy-strapped Europe, government officials are taking note Last week, Danish authorities ordered one of its electricity providers to continue and resume operations of power station units that use coal and oil for fuel. And while the move is absolutely what needs to be done to keep the lights […]