Happy New Year

Over the past several days, I have read a number of stories about the political and legal challenges that companies like Southern Co., FPL, and CPS are facing as they attempt to roll some of the costs of efforts to expand their nuclear plant capacity into their current rate structure. In most cases the numbers…

I love the wind. For many years, one of my very favorite hobbies was sailing on large boats. I was never rich enough to own my own boat. I always depended on the kindness of others to provide the equipment that I needed in order to indulge in my ever fascinating and challenging hobby. By…

There is a story in the Sunday, January 25, 2009 issue of the Washington Post that is contains one of the best illustrations of the Jevons Paradox that I have seen in a while. (From the Wikipedia entry – “In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress…

Many of you are intensely interested in the energy policies that will be implemented following the US election. It is often much easier to hear 5-10 second sound bites and chants like “drill baby drill” than to find serious discussions about what the candidates and their staffs are really thinking. On September 23, 2008, the…

The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog has an October 17, 2008 post titled Coal Storage: Clean Coal’s Next Big Hurdle?. It attempts to put the challenge of storing CO2 from coal fired power plants into the same bin as the challenge of storing used nuclear fuel. It gives a completely inaccurate picture of the…

Marathon Oil has announced plans to drill gas wells approximately 21 miles off the coast of Wales. The company discovered a gas deposit there in 1994, but determined that the market price was not high enough to support the cost of developing the field while still providing an attractive rate of return. The current price…