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Climate Change: The Heat Is On

From reporting to trading, utilities try to meet new expectations.

From reporting to trading, utilities try to meet new expectations.

On the issue of global climate change, most utilities have devoted their attention to tracking developments in Washington, D.C., following the rising and falling fortunes of legislation that could result in federal greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting or regulatory requirements. For the most part, utilities have taken comfort in the resolutely anti-regulatory stance of the Bush administration on greenhouse gas emissions.

Byline: 
Douglas W. Smith and Kyle W. Danish
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The Blackout of 2003: Why We Fell Into The Heart of darkness

The road to the current reliability crisis is paved with four decades of bad policy decisions.

The road to the current reliability crisis is paved with four decades of bad policy decisions.

 

The technical causes of the great Northeast blackout of August 2003 are coming into focus. For reasons yet unknown as of press time, transmission lines in northern Ohio were lost to the grid, and within seconds 50 million people in the United States and Canada were without power. Soon we will no doubt know the specific reasons for the blackout, and technical corrections and improvements will be made.

Byline: 
John O. Sillin
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Off Peak

Power plants choose that most renewable of fuels.

Dung Deal

Power plants choose that most renewable of fuels.

Power from pig poop. Sounds like a skit from Saturday Night, but it's not. In July, a bona fide dung-fired power plant came online in that most proper of nations, Great Britain. And according to the firm behind the project, Farmatic UK, the plant could be the first of many in Britain.

Dung-fired power plants are also popular in Germany and Denmark, which each has about 20 large-scale plants operating.

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The Bush Plan and Beyond: Toward a More Rational U.S. Energy Policy

Any plan to reduce energy consumption should rest on economics — not ideology.

In addition to increasing total U.S. gas consumption to 34.7 Tcf in 2020, it would take another 11.3 Tcf/year to convert existing coal-fired U.S. steam-electric capacity to gas-fired combined-cycle units operating at the same load factor. Clearly, that is a tall order. Nevertheless, we must face the fact that there are few alternatives other than backing out coal-fired generation that would reduce global carbon emissions to a total of less than 870-990 million metric tons between 1991 and 2100. The logical endpoint will be electrification of most stationary energy uses with high-tech renewable or essentially inexhaustible energy sources, and the use of hydrogen from non-fossil-fuel sources as the dominant transportation fuel.
Byline: 

Henry R. Linden

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News Analysis

The lawyers debated over ozone and soot, but the markets saw NO<sub>x</sub> as the "smoking gun."

 

News Analysis

 



 

Byline: 
Carl J. Levesque
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News Analysis

A Twenty-Fold Increase?

Former coal lobbyist Glenn Schleede plays Don Quixote, crusading against the DOE's 20-year initiative to boost investment in windmills.

Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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