Blog

27Jun

Rebalance the Electricity Marketplace

For those opposed to government intervention to ensure grid reliability, the rallying cry has sounded something like: “How dare you interfere in the free market?” What free energy market are these critics talking about? As Hollman Jenkins Jr. recently observed in The Wall Street Journal, “Energy decisions are already highly politicized.” He continues, “That’s the […]
20Jun

It’s Past Time to Align Energy Policy with Energy Reality

Coal’s much-publicized decline isn’t a decline at all. Coal plant retirements in the U.S. and some parts of Europe have created a narrative that coal is in irreversible global retreat. The data tell a different story. The oil and gas giant BP’s recently released annual Statistical Review of World Energy offers an important reality check […]
13Jun

The World is More Uncertain Than You Think

Nobel Laurette Daniel Kahneman, the author of the best-selling Thinking, Fast and Slow, offered some sage advice to investment professionals at the CFA Institute’s recent annual conference. According to the institute’s blog, Kahneman said: “When something happens, you immediately understand how it happens. You immediately have a story and an explanation. You have that sense […]
06Jun

Trust Us, We’ve Got This

June 6, 2018 What emergency? That’s the message we keep hearing from critics of the Trump administration’s plan to boost the reliability and resiliency of the nation’s grid. Sure, these critics admit, we’ve lost half the nation’s coal fleet since 2010 and dozens more coal plants are teetering on the edge of premature retirement. And […]
30May

Breaking: World Still Cares about Affordable, Reliable, Secure Energy

The New York Times reported this week on an environmental group’s analysis that shows banks are still (gasp!) investing in coal mining and new coal plants. Despite efforts from activists to green-shame financial institutions into walking away from coal, investment in 2017 from U.S. banks alone was up nearly $3 billion from 2016. Global demand […]
22May

When Playing to the Crowd Prevents Progress

May 22, 2018 It’s easy to get confused by the news these days. On a daily basis we see green rhetoric eclipsing the stated purpose of environmental crowd. Take New York’s Gov. Cuomo, for example. Even as he is greening-up his creds for a potential presidential run with commitments around reducing New York’s carbon emissions, […]
14May

Analysis Paralysis

May 14, 2018 Due, in part, to a winter that only begrudgingly and belatedly yielded to spring, this month’s EIA Short-term Energy Outlook now predicts higher coal production for the year than it predicted just last month: 751 million short tons, up from 740 MMST predicted in April. What does this tell you? When it […]
10May

Blowing Hot Air in the Energy Market Discussion

May 10, 2018 To pick a winner for clumsiest quote of last week would be tough. Some votes might go to Elon Musk berating “bonehead” questions from analysts who were simply doing their jobs. Others might choose former Mayor Giuliani conjuring the image of himself as a knight charging to Ivanka Trump’s rescue during his […]
30Apr

Speak Now or Forever Hold Your PR

Last week, while many watched with baited breath as EPA Administrator Pruitt was grilled at hearings on Capitol Hill – more for his travel preferences and security muscle than his policies – an important deadline came and went: the deadline for comment on the repeal of the so-called Clean Power Plan. And it’s ironic that, […]
25Apr

When It Isn’t the Ships but the Fleet that Sinks

There’s a sudden change in the wind, and it isn’t spring. In the space of a week, far-sighted officials at FERC, at the Department of Energy and in Congress have shifted attention away from saving First Energy’s plants to saving the grid’s reliability. Under assault is the lazy assumption held by the “do-nothing” faction that […]