Blog

13Mar

Storm Warnings for the SS Grid

Have we successfully weathered doubts about grid resilience and reliability? We’ll know more after FERC digests the assessments from grid operators that were due Friday. But Beltway pundits appear to have already consigned fears over possible brownouts and rate hikes to yesterday’s news. The Department of Energy’s staff report concluded that the SS Grid was […]
28Feb

The Great Game 2018

Ever since the 19th century, when European powers vied for dominance in The Great Game, Central Asia and the Middle East have offered rival empires the prize of abundant natural resources. Armed conflict has often been the result. If Japan and Germany were resource self-sufficient, a second world war might have been avoided. Today the players […]
21Feb

The Iliad – A CPP Parable for Our Time

EPA has scheduled listening sessions on the Clean Power Plan (CPP) for today (Kansas City), next week (San Francisco, Calif.) and next month (Gillette, Wyo.), dragging the controversial carbon control machinery back in discussion. Stayed by the Supreme Court, the CPP’s fate now resides with EPA under new management. Although a decision to repeal and […]
14Feb

The New Luddites

If any further evidence is needed to substantiate widespread voter frustration with Washington gridlock, consider the current reaction to the administration’s infrastructure initiative.  “Infrastructure” improvement is as close as we’ll get to a bipartisan call to action. So what’s to complain about — except who will pay and how much? Now we know. Almost immediately […]
08Feb

Infrastructure – The Missing Link

Washington is now setting its fleeting sights on rebuilding infrastructure.On Monday the White House will unveil infrastructure “principles” that hopefully will add meat to the bones of the president’s initiative highlighted in his State of the Union address. This week both Senate and House committees examined aspects of energy and infrastructure. To “contextualize” this, the […]
31Jan

The Builder from Queens

President Trump, a builder from Queens, N.Y., announced his ambition to rebuild the country. “America is a nation of builders,” he reminded Congress last night, a fact largely forgotten among pundits who write and think but seldom build anything. Coal mining is all about building. The three great industrial revolutions – first England’s, then America’s […]
23Jan

Behind Coal’s Comeback

“The headwinds we faced in recent years have now filled our sails.” That was Hal Quinn’s succinct description of the change in coal’s prospects last year. At USEA’s Annual Energy Forum last week, NMA’s CEO spelled out the winds of change that today are not only favorable but, equally importantly, have reversed. Start with government’s […]
17Jan

The Difference After Year One

January 17, 2018 After year one of the Trump Administration, we can say this about the president’s record so far: despite accusations of favoritism, he has been as generous to the news industry as he has been to corporations. Especially for scribes in the Beltway Thunder Dome, Trump and his Administration have provided all manner […]
08Jan

Where’s the Crisis?

January 8, 2018 “There was no crisis, so no need for FERC action” goes the mantra last week from renewable fuel advocates. The roof didn’t fall in, the gun wasn’t loaded, the rope didn’t snap, so go back to sleep. This is the head-in-the-sand logic of complacent dogmatists. The implication is that nothing less than […]
03Jan

The Vortex Validation

January 3, 2018 What a year it was that just ended.  After seeing an election that embarrassed the political “experts”, we enjoyed a booming economy that embarrassed the economic experts. That gifted student of failure Casey Stengel said it best: “Nobody here knows anything.” Energy experts found their own platitudes exposed by reality.  None is […]