grid reliability

22Dec

A Year in Review

The year is coming to a close, but before we look forward to 2023 it’s worth looking back on the stories and themes that shaped the energy conversation in 2022 and coal’s role in it. An ongoing global energy crisis continues to upend markets and trade flows. Coal – so often the recipient of premature […]
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 […]
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 […]
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% […]
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 […]
07Sep

Learn from California’s Self-Imposed Crisis

Will California – the global tech capital – plunge into darkness? Broiling heat has once again pushed California’s shaky grid to the limit. Record power demand has threatened to eclipse available supply with utilities, the grid operator and the governor all pleading for citizens and businesses to curb demand to keep rolling blackouts at bay. Just […]
04Aug

Supercharging the Reliability Crisis

For all of the focus on energy policy in Washington, attention to the unfolding grid reliability crisis remains alarmingly absent. In fact, some of the principal causes of the crisis are receiving fresh reinforcement while substantive efforts to address the forces weakening the nation’s supply of power have yet to materialize. Even as grid regulators […]
06Jul

Coal Remains Globally Essential

Perhaps The Economist announcing an “end to coal” last year was just a bit premature. As The Wall Street Journal just reported, from Asia to Europe and the U.S., coal is once again having a moment. Energy shortages, rediscovery of the importance of energy security and energy-driven inflation are all driving a new, voracious appetite […]
22Jun

Voters Want Action on Grid Reliability

Americans are deeply concerned about the reliability of the nation’s power grid and the affordability of their electricity supply. They’re so concerned, even frustrated, with warnings over the potential for rolling blackouts – or worse – they now want government action to fix the problem. According to national polling from Morning Consult, nearly 8 in […]