By making federal certification more politicized, interstate natural-gas pipelines have had to spend additional money to defend their position, courts have become more burdened, and environmentalists have spent large sums of money…. These costs would seem to overwhelm any benefits: Demanding that FERC considers climate change is destined for failure.
The U.S. natural gas industry has enjoyed a great run over the past decades, continuing its stellar history upon the end of wellhead price controls several decades ago. The transition of interstate gas transmission to mandatory open access was also successful, freeing the commodity from public-utility regulation to introduce real-time scarcity pricing.
The natural gas sector has contributed greatly to the U.S. economy by creating quality jobs and reducing household and business energy bills on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars.…
Continue Reading“Open-cycle (peak) gas plants are the most common asset used to backstop wind and solar intermittency. However, as the wind and solar capacity increases, the incentive for a private company to invest in such assets declines to the point where the operator of the electric system must provide a subsidy to the construction of gas plants capable of providing electricity on very short notice.”
A number of utilities are trying to become 100% carbon free in their production of electricity by relying on renewable sources of energy.
I am not at all certain what this means. Often the only sources of renewable electricity are wind turbines and solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, and, to a much lesser extent, geothermal. (Iceland is the only country relying on geothermal.)
Both wind and solar energy suffer from what is known as intermittency, because winds have a nasty habit of suddenly dying or springing up, while the sun will disappear behind clouds and provides no power at night.…
Continue ReadingThe Alliance for Wise Energy
Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested
in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise
is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please
consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).
A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three
weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media
about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance
in publishing this information.
Some of the more important articles in this issue are:
Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization — Because They Were Never Meant To
IEA Report: Worldwide Renewable Growth is Stalling
Europe’s Dramatic Decline Of Renewable Energy Uptake
Oklahoma passes new bill to protect military airspace from wind turbine encroachment
Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis?…
Continue Reading