Michael Regan

08Feb

The Country Needs Coal Too Mr. President

Call it an admission of pragmatism. While talking to the nation’s energy future last night during the State of the Union address, President Biden went off script and admitted that “we’re still going to need oil and gas for a while.” It was a statement of fact even if it made climate hawks grimace. What […]
11Jan

The Grid Crisis is a Certainty

The U.S. electricity grid is undeniably in crisis. As rolling blackouts over Christmas demonstrated, no corner of the country is immune. Regions that were supposed to be safe from power shortfalls found themselves unable to keep the lights on. Tens-of-millions of other ratepayers got the unexpected present of emergency alerts asking them to dial back […]
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. […]
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 […]
21Sep

Picking the Wrong Bridge

Dispatchable fuel diversity has long provided a shield to electricity consumers from fuel price spikes. But that optionality is eroding in much of the U.S. – or is already gone – as the coal fleet is pushed off the grid. Years of warnings about the potential pain to consumers should natural gas prices spike, and […]
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 […]
30Jun

Reining in the EPA

Today, in a majority decision in West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court placed important limits on the authority government agencies have to unilaterally issue transformative regulations of vast economic and political significance. The court ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t have the authority under the Clean Air Act to force […]
15Jun

The Nation Braces for Blackouts

Warnings of blackouts this summer are quickly becoming a dangerous reality for much of the country In the Midwest, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which manages the region’s grid, issued a warning of tight capacity conditions on June 13 as the grid struggles to keep up with soaring demand from a heatwave. Utilities were […]
23Mar

Dismantling Grid Reliability One Rulemaking at a Time

When Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Michael Regan recently boasted that he doesn’t have to rely on any one policy or rulemaking to achieve his agenda, he turned more than a few heads. He signaled his intent to race forward on a zealous and wide-ranging regulatory program regardless of unsettled questions about EPA’s authority to […]
16Mar

EPA is Determined to Accelerate the Electricity Affordability Crisis

The energy crisis emanating from Europe is a wakeup call for policymakers about the importance of energy security and the delicate balancing act required by the energy transition. Europe’s energy policy missteps are now proving an invaluable example of a path best avoided. Overreliance on Russian energy, lack of dispatchable fuel diversity and a rushed […]