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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utilities
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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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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The Anatomy of a Power Outage in Michigan
The power went out. Then the ice melted. A few days later, the snow came, and the power went out– again. Now that the snow is gone, what’s next?
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Community Solar: Coming To A Michigan Near You?
DTE and CMS took the unusual step of tag-teaming a new announcement about community solar, a novel model for photovoltaic power generation development, in the Mitten state, where fossil fuels continue to dominate the generation mix.
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Energy Burden: How To Measure? How To Reduce?
Measuring energy burden is relatively straightforward. Figuring out how to create robust metrics for it, though– and how to address it- is much more challenging.
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Better Utility Regulation: How We Can Get Out Of This Mess
Too much regulation restricts innovation. But too little regulation does the same, and this is what we see in the crumbling infrastructure of Michigan, where regulators are asleep at the wheel in the name of a “business-friendly regulatory” environment that, as it turns out, is neither terribly regulatory nor terribly business-friendly.
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