Current Issue

Hike by Candlelight

Yes, it’s still winter. The days are slowly getting longer, but there’s a month to go yet before Daylight Saving Time fully brightens up the evenings. There’s still snow on the ground, and it’s cold. Without the twinkling holiday lights that have long since been packed away, winter can start to feel a little dreary

Underground Railroad—Burying CO2: Sound strategy or costly diversion?

A paradox of modern governance: As the economics of low-cost natural gas and federal regulation diminish coal use in electricity production, agencies like the Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tout carbon capture and sequestration as a lifeline for the coal industry and coal’s future as power plant fuel. Government has blown

Grid Security

Just a few months ago the nation’s attention was focused almost entirely on the presidential election. More than once during the fall, emails containing unflattering statements by key players in the nomination and election contests were stolen by hackers and made public, with the apparent motive of sowing confusion and undermining Americans’ confidence in the

Designer electric grids: Microgrids will serve reliability, security and sustainability

A new way of thinking about electric utilities could make your energy supply less vulnerable to weather-related interruption, more secure, and more environment-friendly. The idea is microgrids—small, local systems of electric service that are connected to the larger, national electric transmission and distribution grid, but also capable of operating independently from the grid. “How we

NRG has Carbon-Capture Underway; More Controversy over Nuke-Waste; After Bailout, Exelon Went Hiring; Michigan Tightens Requirements; New Source Arguments Stay on Schedule

NRG has carbon-capture underway The first major utility-scale application of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology has reached full operation, NRG Energy announced in January. Retrofitting of the Petra Nova coal-fired power plant near Houston, Texas, started in 2014 and was completed within its $1 billion budget, NRG said. The project differs from the suspended