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.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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Support for cleaner energy surcharges, carbon expectations, firms controlling their energy costs–Deloitte study
More companies are setting formal energy cost-cutting goals and in the process making energy management a strategic discipline. That is one dimension of Deloitte’s second annual survey designed to help executives make energy-related investment and business decisions. Conducted for Deloitte’s Center for Energy Solutions by the Harrison Group market research firm, the survey also found [...]
FAST FIX: At least 32 coal-fired power plants in U.S. headed for closure due to new EPA pollution rules
The hotly debated Air Toxics Rule and Cross State Air Pollution Rule now slated for enactment in three years by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are destined to close at least 32 coal-fired power plants throughout the U.S. each with an average age of 51 years. This according to a survey of 55 power plant [...]
54.5 MPG by 2025 for U.S. cars, lights trucks in auto – Obama – California pact
The White House has briefed the Washington press corps and word is spreading that a deal has been struck between the Obama administration, the auto industry and state of California on new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for cars and light trucks. By 2025, the fleet average reportedly will be required to reach 54.5 [...]
Upton vs. Wall Street and EPA’s greenhouse gas emissions standards plan
Fred Upton, the incoming Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, essentially declared war on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s just-announced plan for setting limits on harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants and oil refiners. “We will not allow the administration to regulate what they have been [...]
2 years later, TN coal ash debacle still a long way from real cleanup
Three days before Christmas in 2008, approximately 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge near a federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in Kingston, Tennessee overwhelmed an 84-acre containment facility flooding a wide swath of the bucolic countryside. Two years later, it is very difficult for objective observers to envision how TVA will “make good” [...]