Giving Credit Where Credit is Due
Ensuring State Emission Reduction in Clean Power Plan
Strong public policy favors giving states credit for the carbon reductions they make while the Plan’s legality is pending.
Pollution
How the Environmental Movement Changed its Mind on Nuclear Power
The anti-growth, anti-people extremists who started the anti-nuclear movement were wrong.
If nuclear were subsidized at the same levels as solar and wind, or allowed to contribute to state RPS, nuclear would continue to be highly economical.
2014 Utility Regulators' Forum
Diversifying Utility Regulation: State regulators voice opinions as mixed as the nation’s geography.
Interviews with public utility commissioners from key states – New York, California, Maryland, and Georgia – on coal carbon, climate, and the revolution in retail. What they’re thinking. What they’re planning.
From Coal to Gas
Regulatory and environmental challenges for power plant conversions under the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
Converting a power plant from coal to natural gas triggers a host of environmental challenges and regulatory issues. Operators could be trading one set of regulatory obligations, liabilities, and costs for another, equally problematic, set of liabilities and costs.
Triggering & Tailoring
What the Supreme Court said, and didn’t.
Justice Scalia saw the need for tailoring as proof that EPA’s Triggering Rule was mistaken.
The Politics of Carbon
Supreme Court may ultimately clarify EPA’s authority under Clean Power Plan.
The Supreme Court questions federal agency authority over greenhouse gas emissions in the recent case of Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA.
Rooftop Parity
Solar for Everyone, including Utilities
An independent system operator for the distribution network could open more opportunities for distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar.
Wind Power Subsidies
Today, tomorrow, forever?
NREL contradicts AWEA, finds wind power not competitive, and favors extending the production tax credit (PTC), but that won’t aid economic growth.
Hidden Predictability
Mining price signals in Ontario’s electricity market.
Hourly spot prices in Ontario power markets reveal no particular pattern – that is, unless you plot the price as a monthly average.
Shale vs. Coal
Portfolio strategies for the new power-fuel market.
Shale gas discoveries and ballooning inventories have pushed natural gas prices down to a 10-year low. At the same time, increasingly stringent emissions regulations are squeezing out some coal-fired power assets. Are we witnessing a power-fuel revolution? And if so, what’s the best survival strategy?