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The National Grid will not implement its blackout prevention scheme tomorrrow evening after French energy suppliers said they were struggling to cope with demand. Earlier today it was announced that the Demand Flexibility Service (DFS), which is designed to avoid blackouts, may have been brought in for the first time on Tuesday evening to reduce strain on the electricity grid. The scheme sees households, which are signed up for the initiative, paid to not use things like electric ovens, dishwashers and tumble dryers between certain hours. It is the first line of defence in the event that peak evening demand...

Xcel Energy had filed motion to dismiss case arguing its equipment failures caused most destructive fire in state history.. A Boulder court will allow a case alleging faulty Xcel Energy equipment was behind the Marshall fire to move forward. Xcel had filed a motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit that argued it contributed to the fire that destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses. Boulder District Judge Christopher Zenisek has rejected a motion by Xcel Energy to dismiss a class action lawsuit that blamed the state’s largest utility for causing or contributing to the hugely destructive Marshall fire on...

The Biden administration has quietly approved plans to build a new crude oil terminal in the Gulf of Mexico off Texas, seemingly in contradiction to the president’s climate agenda.The Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration approved the application (pdf) for Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal, one of four proposed offshore oil export terminals, on Monday.According to the application, the port will be located offshore of Freeport, Texas. It will have 4.8 million barrels of storage capacity and add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity.In its 94-page decision (pdf), the Maritime Administration said that it had approved...

The United States' 92 nuclear reactors currently in operation have a mean age of 41.6 years, the third oldest in the world. As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, the only nuclear fleets that are older are those of Switzerland (46.3 years) and Belgium (42.3 years). Also older are the singular reactors in use in Armenia and the Netherlands.You will find more infographics at StatistaThe U.S. was among the first commercial adopters of nuclear energy in the 1950s, explaining the number of aging reactors today. A building boom between the 1960s and 1970s created today’s nuclear power plants in the United States....

California’s last operating nuclear power plant was given another funding boost Nov. 21 as operators seek to keep it running for another eight years.The U.S. Energy Department awarded Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant $1.1 billion from the Civil Nuclear Credit Program funded by an infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 2021.“This is a critical step toward ensuring that our domestic nuclear fleet will continue providing reliable and affordable power to Americans as the nation’s largest source of clean electricity,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement on Nov. 21.Nuclear power provides half of the nation’s carbon-free electricity,...

Despite all the renewable-energy investments and installations, actual global greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing. That’s largely due to economic growth: While renewable energy supplies have expanded in recent years, world energy usage has ballooned even more – with the difference being supplied by fossil fuels. The more the world economy grows, the harder it is for additions of renewable energy to turn the tide by actually replacing energy from fossil fuels, rather than just adding to it. The notion of voluntarily reining in economic growth in order to minimize climate change and make it easier to replace fossil fuels is...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is sending another $400 million in weapons, ammunition and generators to Ukraine, the White House announced Wednesday, and is pulling the gear from its own stockpiles to get the support to Kyiv as fast as possible as Russia continues to target Ukraine’s energy sources and winter sets in. Including the latest aid, the U.S. has committed more than $19 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24. The new package of aid will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons from its own...

PARIS (Reuters) -The global economy should avoid a recession next year but the worst energy crisis since the 1970s will trigger a sharp slowdown, with Europe hit hardest, the OECD said, adding that fighting inflation should be policymakers' top priority. National outlooks vary widely, although Britain's economy is set to lag major peers, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Tuesday. It forecast that world economic growth would slow from 3.1% this year - slightly more than the OECD foresaw in its September projections - to 2.2% next year, before accelerating to 2.7% in 2024. The OECD said...

We’ve been covering the Biden energy crisis here for some time now, highlighting the various challenges facing the country in terms of keeping the lights on, keeping people’s homes heated in the winter, and generally keeping civilization humming along as you have a right to expect in a supposedly first-world nation. But pointing out shortcomings isn’t enough. There need to be concrete solutions put on the table and a willingness among the voters to demand action from the government. This week, one of the more comprehensive and coherent action plans to accomplish these goals landed on our collective doorstep and...

Eversource has asked the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority to approve an increase that the company said could increase the electric bill for an average customer by nearly 50 percent, or $85 per month, on the supply portion of the bill. Eversource said, if approved, the increased rates would be in effect from Jan. 1, 2023, through June 30, 2023. Eversource is looking to increase the Standard Service Rate for residential customers who receive their energy supply from Eversource from 12.1 cents per kilowatt-hour to 24.2 cents per kWh, compared to 11.5 cents per kWh last winter, Eversource said. The...

Dr. Daniel Fine unexpectantly passed away Monday, September 26, 2022, at Aventura Hospital, Aventura Florida. Dan Fine was a great American patriot. Our nation lost a real hero at 88. Daniel Fine predicted the end of nations. He predicted the Fall of the Soviet Union in the cold war in his seminal work Resource War in 3-D. This was a major assessment in the raw materials sector of U.S. national security and foreign policy. He redefined the Cold War. In a meeting with William De Clerk, then President of South Africa, Dr. Fine predicted that apartheid would fall. Dr. Fine...

It had been an article of faith since the 1990s when the idea of “climate reparations” was first proposed that the United States would never participate in such an extortion scheme. Then Joe Biden got elected. At the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, wealthy nations agreed for the first time to a framework that would pay poorer countries for “damages” that are caused by climate change. Droughts, storms, heat waves, excessive cold — all can now be itemized as part of the cost poor countries pay because rich countries are responsible for the changing climate. Of course, storms and droughts...

My first blush takeaway from the mid-terms is how disaffected so many of us are. Feeling poorer through inflation is just depressing. This includes the psychological damage felt when your loved ones are also hurting. Our society is inarguably in steep decline with no end in sight. But what if there was a way to immediately change such a negative outlook? I can conceive of a way to fix the most basic problem that led us to where we are today. One which won’t have the Treasury print more worthless dollars in an attempt to make you feel better or...

SALEM, Ore. -- The U.S. government has taken a step toward approving the expansion of a natural gas pipeline in the Pacific Northwest — a move opposed by environmentalists and the attorneys general of Oregon, California and Washington state. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, announced Friday it has completed an environmental impact statement that concluded the project "would result in limited adverse impacts on the environment.”....

Aided by Mitch McConnell, the Biden administration is selling U.S. oil reserves to offset a portion of his profligate spending. ... Over the past few months, a great deal of attention has been focused on the Biden administration’s decision to draw down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a blatant attempt to manipulate the price of oil to desperately drive down gasoline prices at the pump. This decision was purely political, and it represents a new low in American politics — the blatant use of publicly owned, strategic resources to sway votes in this year’s midterm elections. Although gasoline prices have...

As the first frigid weather of autumn chills the Northeast, many people are faced with a tough decision: deal with the surging costs of heating their homes or live without it. Home heating prices are skyrocketing yet again this winter, up 18% nationwide on top of last year’s 17% spike, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA). Charmaine Johnson works in the call center at Philadelphia’s Heater Hotline, part of a non-profit that assists low-income families with their heating systems and bills. Johnson, 63, can relate to the concerns she’s hearing all day. She, too, is struggling to...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday announced that a large idled refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands will remain shut down until it acquires a new Clean Air Act permit amid a national diesel shortage. The St. Croix refinery, owned by West Indies Petroleum Limited and Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation, LLLC, has been shut down since June 2021 and will have to obtain a Prevention of Significant Deterioration permit which would require the operators to provide detailed air quality analyses and use sophisticated air pollution control technology, according to the EPA press release. At the same time, the...

The COP27 globalist gathering that recently took place in Egypt came with open calls for a global phase-out of, and eventual ban on, all fossil fuels. Were this to actually happen, billions of people would die. A tiny, failing island in the South Pacific called Tuvalu (ever heard of it?) made the proposition using the following quoted statement: “We, therefore, unite with 100 Nobel Peace Prize laureates and 1000s of scientists worldwide to urge world leaders to join the fossil fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, to manage a just transition away from fossil fuels.” One wonders: what does Tuvalu mean by the...

A study on government electricity and gas price data reveals that Brits pay the world's highest energy bills. Norway is the country with by far the biggest increase in electricity prices worldwide. The UK’s energy price cap was recently raised from 28p to 34p per kWh. ... UK has the highest electricity bills. Brits pay more for their power than anywhere else on the planet. ... Ireland.. The UK’s neighbours in the Republic of Ireland have the second highest electricity cost, paying 18.99p per kWh. . ... Residents of Spain are paying an average of 18.51p per kWh. Electricity prices...

Stockholm (AFP) – Swedish officials confirmed Friday that the September blasts which destroyed sections of the Nord Stream pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea were acts of sabotage. "The analyses conducted found traces of explosives on several foreign objects" found at the sites of the blasts, prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist who is leading the preliminary investigation said in a statement. Ljungqvist added that technical analyses were continuing in order to "draw more reliable conclusions regarding the incident." Sweden's Prosecution Authority said that the "continued investigation will show if anyone can be formally suspected of a...