Jim Pierobon is Founder and principal writer of The Energy Fix. He is a policy, marketing and social media strategist who has reported on, testified and consulted about smarter grids, cyber-security as it affects the power grid, fossil fuel shortages, price spikes, energy efficiency and the rise and fall -- and the rise again of nuclear and renewable energy sources.Bloomberg to natural gas industry: stop resisting sensible regulations, join with renewables
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used the 2013 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit near Washington, DC to prod the oil and gas industry to stop resisting efforts to forge “sensible” regulations. “We need sound regulation and we need it soon,” he said. While he’s been on the bandwagon for enabling responsible hydraulic fracturing for natural [...]
With Obama’s win, cleaner energy has another chance, but these questions loom
Just because President Obama won four more years, doesn’t mean the next four will be any easier. Sure, it’s now his legacy he is beginning to focus on. But there are tall hurdles even the election results will do to change. Renewable energy developers and suppliers have a few rays of sunshine and a more [...]
Webinar Sept. 11 on risks of closing 25 gigawatts watts of coal-fired U.S. electric capacity by 2015
As a big ‘squeeze’ on coal-fired power plants in the U.S. continues to gather steam, questions abound whether natural gas can make up virtually all of the difference needed to keep electricity flowing reliably AND keep consumer prices from rising significantly. That is just one of the many questions that was addressed in a unique [...]
Shale gas helping reduce carbon & overall emissions – but by how much?
The results are adding up. It’s hard to ignore how the surging deployment of natural gas for industrial uses and power generation is reducing the growth in U.S. carbon and other harmful emissions and possibly lowering overall emissions. Two recent studies draw from different data sets so one should be careful not to jump to [...]
Risks loom from closure of 25 gigawatts of U.S. coal power plants by 2015 = 8% of capacity
Is there enough natural gas that is findable and deliverable to plug most of the gap created by the projected closure of 25.5 gigawatts (GW) of U.S. generating capacity from coal between now and year-end 2015? That is an increasingly urgent question facing U.S. utilities, power marketers and regulators. The risks of brownouts and perhaps [...]
10 reasons to create a carbon tax
The possible revival of serious talks about a U.S. carbon tax should take thought-leaders to the most recent credible analysis in a book finished earlier this year by Shi-Ling Hsu, a professor at the University of British Columbia: The Case for a Carbon Tax. Here I cut to the chase to spotlight the 10 reasons [...]
U.S. carbon tax talk on the rebound: enough for both parties to dislike . . . and pass?
It might only apply to industry emissions and nary a Republican would dare admit to seriously considering it, but talk of a possible carbon tax is making the rounds in political Washington and elsewhere. Think about it. A carbon tax does not lack for support among mainstream energy and fiscal policy experts; it has drawn [...]
Federal Court’s Upholding EPA on Greenhouse Gases Boosts Opportunity for Hybrids and Power from Renewables and Natural Gas
A federal appeals court has done for natural gas and renewable sources of electricity that no executive branch stimulus package could ever hope to do: raise the bar higher still to justify building another coal-fired power plant in the U.S. The same can be said in favor of hybrid and all-electric passenger cars. Now that [...]
Low natural gas prices are driving coal gasification out of business
Here we have yet another example of less expensive energy trumping efforts not only to use home-grown energy but technologies built and designed by local or regional companies that create local jobs. What toll this trend will take on America’s clean energy landscape already is being felt wherever cleaner energy policies were enacted. How much a recovering economy and slow this trend is front-of-mind for just about everybody in the clean tech space.
FAST FIX: single biggest emitter of CO2 in the U.S.? Scherer coal plant in Georgia
The Scherer complex of four coal-burning power plants near Macon, GA, co-owned and operated by Georgia Power, is the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It spewed almost 23 million tons of CO2 in 2010. According to Natural History magazine, it ranked as the 20th in [...]