Blog

01Nov

A Return to Reason…and the Law

Comments were due this week on EPA’s ACE rule – a welcome return to reason on the heels of its predecessor rule: the Obama administration’s “signature” anti-coal rule, the costly power plan (CPP). Replacing the CPP with ACE brings the EPA back into the realm of the legal, appropriately respecting the balance between state and […]
24Oct

The Big Data Power Surge

It may not have blast furnaces and assembly lines, those iconic symbols of heavy industry, but there’s a new energy-intensive industry rising right before our eyes and its growth could very well upend forecasts for future electricity demand. This new heavy industry – and the infrastructure to support it – is the data industry. As […]
17Oct

Embrace the Pragmatism of Low Emissions Coal Technology

In 2013, the World Bank Group decided to limit financial support for coal-fueled power plants to what it deemed “rare and exceptional circumstances.” It was a decision that almost immediately made perfect the enemy of the good and, as the World Coal Association (WCA) argues in a new report, has likely proved counterproductive to achieving […]
11Oct

Perspective on a Global Challenge

According to the U.N Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world must overhaul how it consumes and produces energy if global warming is to be slowed and eventually stopped. The IPCC’s proposed path forward would see the world all but drop fossil fuels by 2050. It’s a headscratcher. Nearly 80 percent of global energy […]
03Oct

Listen to This

This week, the EPA held a listening session on the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule – its proposed replacement for the prior administration’s costly Clean Power Plan (CPP). The message delivered by the National Mining Association (NMA) and others who care about the reliability and affordability of the grid was clear: the ACE rule is […]
26Sep

A Playbook on What Not to Do

The German Energiewende, or energy transition, was supposed to stir like a composition from Bach or Beethoven. Instead, it sounds like a fork stuck in a garbage disposal. When the Germans embarked on their grand pivot to renewable sources of power, they knew the effort was going to be costly but did they expect the […]
20Sep

Don’t Overlook the Value of Fuel Diversity

British environmentalists are in a tizzy. Despite heavy-handed government efforts to push coal off the UK’s grid, it is regaining market share and bringing much-needed relief to consumers who have dealt with household electricity costs 74 percent higher than here in the U.S. Britain’s pivot away from coal to wind, solar and natural gas has […]
12Sep

California’s Regressive Lab Experiment

Responsible governance is defined differently in California. Governor Jerry Brown has signed an executive order for the state to slash its overall emissions to zero by 2045 and then go negative, meaning that in 2046 the state will have to start pulling more emissions from the atmosphere than it puts in. As a compliment to […]
05Sep

An Alternate Reality

The ongoing debate in the U.S. over the future of coal seems to exist in an alternate reality. While we fight over everything from market distortions to the permitting of coal export terminals, the majority of the world is embracing coal, building more modern, far more efficient plants than our own. Coal isn’t a problem […]
31Aug

How About Now?

Like a snowball tumbling downhill, the reliability crisis is only picking up steam. Despite the continuous and ever-louder warnings that we are quickly approaching a point of no return, regulators and grid operators have brushed aside concerns and spoken in platitudes about protecting a free market that is anything but free. Just how much longer […]