Rich Nolan

14May

Another Summer of Potential Power Shortfalls

Scorching heat could threaten the nation’s energy supply this summer, with demand eclipsing supply and potentially causing shortfalls and power outages throughout large swaths of the United States, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) warned today in its 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment. NERC underscored that the nation’s grid reliability – facing the twin challenges […]
26Mar

Confronting the AI Electricity Bottleneck

The CEO of NVIDIA, a global leader in AI, recently observed, “Every single data center in the future will be power limited… We are now a power limited industry.” What he was saying is that electricity is now the key constraint on the development of data centers, the uptake of AI and the economic potential […]
19Mar

Undoing the Regulatory Assault on Grid Reliability

Just a week ago the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the “biggest deregulatory action in history,” announcing 31 actions to unleash American energy, lower the cost of living, restore the rule of law and give power back to states to make their own decisions. Notably, on the urgent issue of rapidly eroding grid reliability, the […]
11Mar

Burgum and Wright Look to Coal Power

How can the U.S. win the AI arms race with China and preserve reliable and affordable power for all Americans? Secretary of the Interior and Chair of the Energy Dominance Council, Doug Burgum, had a clear answer: use the coal fleet. In a TV interview with Bloomberg News (watch the clip below), Burgum said the […]
30Dec

2024 in Review

Happy almost new year! Before we turn the page on 2024, it’s worth looking back on the stories and major developments that shaped – even reshaped – the energy landscape over the past 12 months. Years of warnings about rapidly eroding grid reliability collided with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA’s) regulatory agenda and the […]
18Dec

NERC’s Christmas Present: Majority of the Nation Faces Blackout Risks

This should be the nail in the coffin of the Biden administration’s unworkable and downright dangerous regulatory policy undermining the nation’s power supply. According to new analysis from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), more than half of the nation faces blackout risks over the next decade due to capacity shortfalls. While these findings […]
01Jul

A Victory for Grid Reliability

In a significant victory for the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid, the U.S. Supreme Court granted state and industry requests to stay enforcement of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Ozone Transport rule. This is the first major court ruling on EPA’s suite of rules designed to prematurely retire coal plants. While pursuing the case […]
22May

As Electricity Demands Soars, BLM Says No New Federal Coal Leasing

On May 16, the Biden administration announced it would not be issuing any new coal leases in the Powder River Basin, the beating heart of federal coal production. It was a decision that doubles down on the administration’s effort to leave the nation woefully unprepared for surging power demand. Riding on the coattails of the […]
25Apr

EPA Doubles Down on the Grid Reliability Crisis

Today, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unleashed a suite of rules specifically designed to force the closure of well-operating coal plants and they did so with absolutely no analysis of the collective impact of these rules on the nation’s alarmingly shaky grid reliability. “For the last three years, the administration has methodically developed […]
11Apr

New Paper: EPA’s Grid Crisis Collides with Surging Power Demand

The National Mining Association (NMA) has released a new paper on the collision of soaring power demand with rapidly eroding grid reliability driven by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory agenda. This is a familiar story to readers of this blog, but this new white paper connects some important dots on the interconnected challenges […]