Free Republic

Germany plans to postpone the closure of the country’s last three nuclear power plants as it braces for a possible shortage of energy this winter after Russia throttled gas supplies to the country, said German government officials. Mr. Scholz hinted at the decision last week, saying for the first time that it could make sense to keep Germany’s last three nuclear reactors online. Mothballed coal plants have already been brought back online to prevent energy blackouts after Russia slashed gas supplies in June, a decision that will complicate Berlin’s plans to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and reduce air pollution.

<p>For years, European policymakers had assured the world that the relatively rapid "transition" to "green" energy was the world's preordained future -- regardless of the costs.</p><p>Accordingly, many European Union governments followed the advice of green experts. They eagerly shut down coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants to transition immediately to "renewable energy."</p>

HONOLULU — Hawaii is receiving its final shipment of coal this week, which Gov. David Ige called a huge step forward in the state’s transition to clean energy. Coal is the cheapest but dirtiest source of power for Oahu. A law put in place a couple of years ago will finally shut down the island’s last coal burning power plant. ... “In its time, coal was an important resource for Hawai‘i and I’d like to thank the workers who have run our last remaining coal plant,” Ige said in a statement. “Renewable energy projects to replace coal are coming online...

Dozens of coal-fired power plants across the U.S. plan to stop burning coal or to shut down by the end of the decade, the Associated Press reported. The decision is not driven by climate change concerns but to comply with a new wastewater rule requiring them to clean coal ash and toxic heavy metals from the water before it's dumped back into streams and rivers. The plants had an October deadline to tell state regulators how they plan to comply. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the rule is expected to affect 75 coal-fired power plants across the country. The...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in West Virginia vs. EPA, ruling that the Clean Air Act did not specifically authorize the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Now, any greenhouse gas regulations would need specific authorization from Congress. At issue was the Clean Power Plan (CPP), an EPA regulation promulgated by the Obama administration which mandated that existing coal and natural gas power plants reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. There were many problems with this regulation, some of them were legal, and some of them were practical. Legally Speaking.. The...

Despite pledges to contribute to global efforts of reducing emissions, China will continue to maximize the use of coal in coming years as it caters to its energy security... Chinese President Xi Jinping has told representatives from its biggest coal-producing region, Inner Mongolia, that China "could not part from reality" and that it is "rich in coal, poor in oil and short of gas... The energy transition is a long process and China cannot just "slam the brakes" on coal. ... China said it would help run its coal-fired power plants at full capacity in a bid to ensure energy...

Why settle for helping Iran nuke America, when you can also help Al Qaeda nuke America? With inflation rising almost as fast as gas prices and the cost of a home, Joe Biden ain’t doing much for most Americans. But if you’re an Al Qaeda terrorist, he’s got your back. Just ask three of Gitmo’s finest who are benefiting from Biden’s generosity. Saifullah Paracha (pictured above) was a Pakistani businessman and New York travel agent with some big plans. The Gitmo inmate now being set loose by Biden wanted to “do something big against the US.” 9/11 was in Al...

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate power plant emissions, in a case that legal scholars say could undermine Congress’s constitutional authority to delegate power to federal agencies. Some argue that such regulation — not just by the EPA, but in President Biden’s vaccine mandate as well — is unconstitutional because of a somewhat arcane legal doctrine called the “nondelegation doctrine.” This theory holds that Congress cannot delegate broad policymaking authority to government agencies. Why does this argument matter? Our research finds that if the Supreme Court were to...

India may be staring at electricity shortages in the coming months because coal stocks at most of its power plants have dropped to critically low levels. As many as 63 of the 135 coal-fired power plants in Asia's third largest economy have two days — or less — of coal supplies, India's Central Electricity Authority (CEA) said in a report on Tuesday. Coal stocks at 17 of them have been run down to zero, it added. In total, 75 plants are running with five days worth of coal or less Coal accounts for almost 70% of the country's electricity generation.

DENVER — Xcel Energy customers could see higher bills in 2022. The company submitted a proposal to raise rates to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. They say the increase will help fund “next-generation technology investments that expand and strengthen the reliability of the electric grid for customers, advance Colorado’s clean energy policies, and increase capacity to meet growing customer needs and expectations.” Xcel said that since 2019 and through 2022, it will spend for $4 billion on the investments. How much will my bill increase? Residential customers would see their bills increase by an average of $9.46 a month, or...

California residents were asked to voluntarily conserve power again Friday as a heat wave baking the U.S. West strained the state’s energy grid and raised the possibility of rotating outages. As temperatures spiked on Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an emergency proclamation that suspended certain permitting requirements, allowing power plants to ramp up operations if necessary to meet the demand for electricity. The proclamation cited the “extreme heat peril” facing the state this week. The California Independent System Operator, which runs the energy grid, issued a Flex Alert for 6 to 9 p.m. Friday. During those hours, people are urged...

The nearly simultaneous shutdown of four gigantic power plants in Texas — capable of powering almost 1 million homes — drove the region to the brink of yet another energy crisis this past week as temperatures soared, according to data analyzed by Bloomberg. All told, generators across the second-largest U.S. state were either down for repairs or running at reduced capacity when triple-digit heat was baking Texas, according to data compiled by Wood Mackenzie Ltd.'s Genscape unit. But the biggest impacts came from just a handful of facilities: a Vistra Corp.-owned 1.15-megawatt nuclear reactor, and three other giant facilities owned...

The Environmental Protection Agency will propose easing rules on disposal of coal ash, the residue from burning coal, to make it less likely the federal government would shutter a coal-fired utility plant, in an announcement set for Monday. The move is part of what has been a larger deregulation push by the Trump administration to roll back strict Obama-era regulations that the industry viewed as the previous administration’s “war on coal” that pushed to shut down many coal-fired power plants. “The EPA is no longer picking winners and losers in electric generation,” Peter Wright, assistant administrator for EPA Office of...

GOP power broker Haley Barbour’s lobby shop, BGR Group, represents a Russian bank that has financed a company that helped build Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, according to corporate documents and lobbying disclosure records. The bank is owned by a secretive oligarch, Mikhail Fridman, who has met at least twice with White House officials in the last few years, according to visitor logs.

Representative K.C. Becker and Senator Faith Winter have introduced legislation that would give Xcel Energy a green light and blank check to prematurely close existing power plants, replace them with expensive, intermittent resources, and then force captive electric ratepayers to pick up the tab with interest for the massive fuel switching scheme and workforce transition plans. ... Colorado Energy Plan (CEP) .. The monopoly utility is more than willing to build and build and build so it can fuel switch to utility-scale wind, solar, and batteries (which don’t really exist yet) at the expense of Colorado ratepayers. Instead of saving...

When the Colorado Public Utilities Commission recently approved Xcel Energy’s Colorado Energy Plan, the commissioners made a highly politicized decision that ignored economic reality, bypassed the state legislature and allowed the company to break its promise to save customers money. Coloradans should be troubled not just by the plan itself, but by how it won approval through an end-run of the democratic process. In August 2017, Xcel unveiled the Colorado Energy Plan .. The plan’s cheerleaders, including Gov. John Hickenlooper and state agencies, celebrated the monopoly utility’s proposal to spend $2.5 billion on fuel switching ... Earlier in 2017, Xcel...

Xcel again proved its preeminent power over every crack and crevasse of state government when the governor’s appointed Public Utilities Commission approved Xcel’s plan to close two state-of-the-art power plants a decade before they’re supposed to. At the same time the PUC acknowledges Xcel was lying when they said the move would save us money. ... The public relations spin on this corporate heist is glorious. Even though the coal-fired power plants, Comanche 1 and 2, are the most clean-burning that modern technology allows, making them the cleanest in the nation, they still use vilified coal, so this move looks...

State-sponsored Russian hackers appear to have a greater interest in the U.S. power grid than meddling in the fall midterm elections since reports indicate that so far only two Senate Democrats up for re-election had online accounts tampered with, The New York Times reported Friday. There's little evidence of Russian military hackers in U.S. elections or state election systems, U.S. intelligence officials and representatives from technology companies maintain, but report there has been quite a lot of evidence pointing to foreign agents implanting malware on electric grids across the country. The Department of Homeland Security revealed this week Russia's military...

Windmills use an enormous amount of copper. For example, a single wind turbine can contain 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum and 700-plus pounds of rare earth minerals. ... In fact, wind and solar energy use more copper than conventional forms of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. Conventional power plants require about one ton of copper to produced one megawatt of electricity, whereas wind and solar can require between three to five tons per megawatt. ... Make no mistake, switching from reliable sources of electricity like coal, natural gas,...

New England is facing an energy future of “rolling blackouts and controlled outages” by 2025 as more power plants close down and pipeline capacity continues to lag behind.The new report by the New England’s grid operator comes after the region suffered through a frigid start to the new year that pushed up prices and strained energy supplies. It could be just a taste of the region’s future.“Taken together, the study results suggest that New England could be headed for significant levels of emergency actions, particularly during major fuel or resource outages,” ISO New England found in a new study,“Harder to...