First TMI, Now Palisades. Is Uranium Back?
Nuclear power advocates have regained a healthy glow, though the environmental movement continues to split more hairs than atoms over the role of the carbon-free energy source.
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energy
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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NREL Prizes for Energy Innovation
The Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are teaming up to produce a series of competitive prize programs to facilitate innovation in energy and decarbonization.
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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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Why Is So Much Farmland Suddenly Being Taken Up By Solar Power? Also, Is That Bad?
Solar farms are growing in popularity, taking up more and more land every day. Is that a good thing?
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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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Radiators Vs. Forced Air: Who Will Triumph In Efficiency?
A recent Twitter debate prompted me to think about whether we can’t come up with a better metric to compare the efficiencies of heating systems using radically different methods of thermal transfer. As you can probably guess, there is a better way– but it’s not easy to figure out.
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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
Read MoreRemembering George Crabtree (1944-2023)
The energy sector lost a giant this week in the passing of Dr. George Crabtree, who was one of the
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