Give Me Something To Work With, DTE!
DTE Energy truly offers the worst of both worlds– high prices and little to show for it in terms of reliability, energy efficiency, or clean energy.
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Utilities
Nuclear Power Is Actually Not Bad. Microsoft is Bad.
Constellation just announced a deal that the generation utility will restart the surviving Three Mile Island reactor, which was shut down in 2019. That’s good news. The more complicated news is that Microsoft is buying all of that power for its data centers and artificial intelligence, both of which continue to consume staggering amounts of electricity– which they buy for far cheaper than what we peasants must pay.
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Southeast Michigan Dreams of Public Power
Municipalization of public utilities, transportation systems, and distribution systems for gas and electricity was all the rage about a century ago. Is it time to bring it back into vogue? A symposium looked at this question.
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Sidebar: An Easy Argument Against Fossil Fuels? Cost.
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of solar and onshore wind power have declined so much in the past decade that we’ve gone from an all-renewable grid being a pipe dream to it being a matter of simple market logic. While there are a couple of challenges ahead, this is at least encouraging as we continue down the road toward decarbonization.
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Energy Burden: The Elephant in the Electrification Room
Dr. Destenie Nock and Shuchen Cong presented from Carnegie Mellon University on a new approach they are taking to assess energy burden in communities around the United States. It is important analysis that will help inform how public service commissions develop better energy efficiency policy for utilities, and how utilities assess the needs of their most vulnerable customers.
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ERCOT Is Working Exactly As It’s Meant To. That’s… Kinda The Problem.
Texas made the conscious decision to cut itself off from the rest of the country. In extreme weather conditions, either its consumers, its energy producers, or its government are going to have to pick up the tab.
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Michigan SB 271: Not-So-Lofty Goals Face Off Against Fossil Fuels
Michigan’s Senate is currently working on an energy bill that would require utilities to adopt a 100% renewable portfolio standard by 2035. It’s a good start, but there are a few holes that need to be plugged.
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MI Healthy Climate Conference: Is It A New Day In Michigan?
I wrapped up a couple of days at the MI Healthy Climate conference. We talked about decarbonization, public health, and innovation. We even got to see some eBikes!
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New Ideas For Utility Policy (Idea No. 2)
In my last article, I looked at this question of “dig once” and how it might influence utility affordability and
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Can Utilities Be Held Financially Liable For Outages?
In the aftermath of recent power outages that saw as much as 20% of the population of the state of Michigan without power, this article outlines some ideas on what specific things we should be asking about or thinking about in trying to hold utilities accountable.
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