Free Republic

Executives at a Bermudan firm funneling money to U.S. environmentalists run investment funds with Russian tycoons. A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president...

When the temperature dips below freezing, reliable electricity becomes more than a matter of convenience but a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, the reliability of our electric grid is at-risk due to EPA regulations that are shutting down America’s coal plants.Existing EPA regulations already have led to the scheduled shutdown of nearly 20 percent of the U.S. coal fleet. EPA’s newest carbon regulations being finalized this summer will lead to even more shutdowns. With coal responsible for generating nearly 40 percent of America’s electricity, these shutdowns will further strain our nation’s electricity grid and could leave many Americans in...

I am guessing you don’t know one of the major things resident Obama was doing while snubbing France and world leaders who convened in Paris to express solidarity in the civilized world’s war against radical Islamic terrorism. I assure you it was something close to his heart — as opposed to fighting Islamic jihad. It was something that will thrill the anti-business, anti-energy extreme environmentalists but will not warm the hearts of American businesses and energy producers, and it is not good news for America’s currently overhyped economy. Yes, you heard me right; despite all the faux euphoria projected by...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — As schools reopen here in the coming days after the Christmas break, South Africans are braced for a surge in the power cuts that have plagued the country since early December, and the rolling blackouts could spell trouble for the ruling African National Congress at the ballot box. During the week, schools, factories and offices will move to full capacity, drawing on an already-fragile national grid. And in the heat of the Southern Hemisphere summer, air conditioners will be turned on full blast. A state-owned company, ESKOM, has the monopoly to produce more than 95 percent...

Even as gasoline prices plummeted and the overall energy price index calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics declined, electricity prices bucked the trend in the United States in 2014. Data released today by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December and for the year. 2014 was the most-expensive year ever for electricity in the United States. The annual price index for electricity, published by BLS today, was 208.020. That was up from 200.750 in 2013. ... The average price for a kilowatt hour of electricity in the United States was...

Wholesale on-peak electricity prices were up at trading hubs across the nation between 2013 and 2014, driven largely by increases in spot natural gas prices and high energy demand caused by cold weather in the beginning of the year. Electricity prices were highest in the Northeast, driven by record-high natural gas prices early in the year during a very cold winter. Spot natural gas prices at the Henry Hub averaged $4.38 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2014, an increase of 17% from 2013, and prices at other major trading points were up 16%-40% in 2014. Electricity prices were...

Bill Gates recently got to check out the Omniprocessor, an ingenious machine designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, which turns human waste into water and electricity. In places without good waste treatment plants, it could be a real game-changer.

I got an e-mail that had one of those, "I'm just a regular guy but I've discovered the secret ... " type message ...

The New York Times ran an interesting article a few days ago discussing the skyrocketing electricity prices residents of New England are being forced to pay even before the winter season begins. The article identifies a resident of New Hampshire named John York who paid $376 to power his small printing business this past October. With no change in the amount of his work or his thermostat, his electricity bill climbed to $788 in November – an increase of 110 percent in just one month. What the article reveals (perhaps unintentionally) are the likely consequences of heavy handed government policies...

People who own all-electric cars where coal generates the power may think they are helping the environment. But a new study finds their vehicles actually make the air dirtier, worsening global warming. Ethanol isn't so green, either. "It's kind of hard to beat gasoline" for public and environmental health, said study co-author Julian Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. "A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean ... are not better than gasoline."

“Lack of transparency was really critical to getting it passed,” former Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber explained. The Democrats cleverly exploited the American voters’ “lack of economic understanding.” Now President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is using secretive, duplicitous science, and exploiting people’s lack of scientific understanding, to impose punitive regulations cleverly labeled the “clean power plan.” The agency claims the clean power plan will prevent “dangerous manmade climate change” by reducing carbon dioxide and “encouraging” greater use of renewable energy. Its real goal is forcing coal-fired power plants to reduce operations significantly or shut down entirely. The EPA also claims that...

The closure of Japan's nuclear power plants following the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami increased fossil fuel consumption and led to a wave of new coal plant construction. Japan plans to build 28 new coal-fired power generation units with total capacity of as much as 14,800 megawatts, due to come online in the next decade or so. Total = 28 units 13,801-14,801 megawatts. Individual plants and start dates excepted

The costs of solar energy are plummeting, and now are about on par with the electricity generated at big power plants. This new reality intensifies a long-running business and regulatory battle, between the mainline electric utility companies and newer firms that provide solar systems for homeowners' rooftops. Sometimes the rivalry looks more like hardball politics than marketplace economics. The way rooftop solar typically works, the homeowner leases rooftop panels from a company that owns and installs them. It can be an expensive proposition, but the homeowner saves some money by drawing less power from the utility company's electric plants, and...

EPA’s proposed guidelines for carbon dioxide (CO2)emissions from existing stationary sources are fatally flawed. The rule violates the language of the Clean Air Act; it arbitrarily and capriciously imposes emission reduction goals with no analysis from EPA on the actual warming impacts; it is not supported by the American people nor Congress; it will drive up electricity prices; and it will threaten the stability of the electricity grid. EPA fails to note that in exchange for higher electricity rates, the benefit of this rule is that the world is expected to be 0.018 degrees Celsius cooler than otherwise by 2100....

After four years of battle with opponents of safe, economical nuclear energy -basically same dummies closing down our coal industry (Obama, Reid, et. al.)- the large federal nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada was recently deemed 'safe' by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission... so why not get going with that, then? Nuclear energy is simply wonderful in my view, and only real green kooks like the German left are walking away from it. Not even the tsunami disaster at Fukushima, Japan has scared them away from utilizing it... Tokyo knows the 1964, single-walled reactors were outdated and risky, and unlike anything you'd...

Researchers have converted 40 percent of sunlight hitting a solar cell into electricity, which is the highest efficiency ever reported. The achievement was made using focused sunlight, and could have implications in photovoltaic power, the University of New South Wales reported. "This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity," said UNSW Scientia Professor and Director of the Advanced Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) Professor Martin Green. "We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry," added Mark Keevers, the UNSW solar scientist who managed...

Ever since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its Clean Power Plan proposal this past June, a number of analyses have been conducted to try and determine the total cost of the regulation to electricity consumers. A report released this morning by Energy Ventures Analysis (EVA), however, goes a step further. In addition to the Clean Power Plan, EPA has recently finalized, proposed, or will soon propose a slew of environmental regulations affecting the electric power sector. These include new National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone and particulate matter, the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) to...

... heated fight for a seat on Louisiana's Public Service Commission (PSC) is still going strong. December runoff between PSC chairman Eric Skrmetta and alternative energy advocate Forest Bradley-Wright.

Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) pledged on “Fox News Sunday” to be “extremely aggressive” in trying to rollback some regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency. “Extremely aggressive,” she said when asked how aggressive she would be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations. “That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. “We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job,...

When Don Sage of Concord, N.H., learned his electric bill could rise by as much as $40 a month he got flustered. He and his wife make do on a bit less than $30,000 a year in Social Security payments, and they pay close attention to their electric bills. "When the invoice comes in the mail to get paid, I have a target amount that we can fluctuate up or down, based on our fixed budget," Sage says. "They don't need my permission to hike up their rates, but the fact is we're the ones that are paying these increases."...