Free Republic

DENVER — Xcel Energy customers are sweating the possibility of another rate hike. They're making their opposition known to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) as the agency considers a $45 million electric rate increase. “They make more than enough money. They don’t need to gouge their customers any further,” said Loren Meaux, an Xcel customer, in a public comment hearing Tuesday. Xcel originally filed for a $312 million increase to pay for investments in transmission projects and its commitment to meet Colorado greenhouse gas emissions goals. After negotiations with state regulators and consumer advocates, the company dropped the increase to...

PUC Public Comment Hearing Info re: Xcel Energy JTS.. ... The PUC invites community members to provide comments regarding Xcel Energy’s Just Transition Plan (JTS), Proceeding 24A-0442E. The JTS is Xcel Energy’s next Electric Resource Plan to address the acquisition of new utility resources to meet future electricity needs on its system. The primary objectives of the JTS include fulfilling resource adequacy and providing reliable service; continuing progress on emissions reductions; and, delivering a just transition in communities where generation assets are retiring. Xcel Energy’s Unit 3 coal-fired facility in Pueblo will retire no later than Jan. 1, 2031, and...

Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle increasingly advocate for affordable, reliable, and clean energy. This is for good reason – modern society requires energy that is affordable and available on demand. Environmental concerns are also very important. Together, affordability, reliability, and cleanliness form the three pillars of ideal energy policy. Two new analyses evaluate competing electrical power sources and produce an affordable, reliable, and clean scorecard. The two analyses – one published by Northwood University and the Mackinac Center, and the other published by my public policy organization, The Heartland Institute – independently reach near-identical findings. Both analyses...

Within the first months of his second administration, President Donald Trump has prioritized “unleashing” American energy and has already axed several of what he considers to be burdensome regulations on the coal industry, promising it’s “reinvigoration.” Trump signed an executive order on April 8 to revive the coal industry, and shortly after moved to exempt several coal plants from Biden-era regulations. Though it has become a primary target of many climate activists, coal has been historically regarded as readily available and affordable, and several energy policy experts who spoke with Daily Caller News Foundation believe Trump has the cards necessary...

China is Building Coal-Fired Power Plants at an Alarming Rate of two new coal plants every week! America continues to subsidize the development of occasionally generated electricity from weather dependent wind turbines and solar panels, to replace coal power plants, with the expectation that America, with about 4% of the world’s population, can drastically impact the world’s emissions occurring from the other 96% people on this planet. Coal is the world’s most abundant and reliable energy source. The United States has the world’s largest coal reserves. Of the 15 major coal producing States, Montana has the largest coal reserve with...

Driven by surging electricity demand in China and India, global coal use is set to hit an all-time high in 2024, disproving past predictions from energy “experts.” The International Energy Agency (IEA) — a Paris-based intergovernmental organization that provides energy policy recommendations — said in its Coal 2020 report that “coal demand is expected to flatten” and that “it is likely that global coal demand peaked in 2013 at just over 8Bt [billion tons].” Now, however, a Wednesday report from the agency predicts coal demand will reach a new record of nearly 8.8 billion tons in 2024, as increased coal...

According to the lawsuit, the three asset managers acquired substantial stockholdings in coal companies, and then used their influence to pressure the companies to adopt ESG goals and reduce output. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with 10 other state attorney generals, have filed a lawsuit against BlackRock, State Street Corporation, and Vanguard Group, three of the largest institutional investors in the world. The lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges the firms conspired to artificially constrict the market for coal through anti-trade practices. “Texas will not tolerate the illegal weaponization of the financial industry in service of a destructive, politicized ‘environmental’ agenda....

In recent days, the Biden administration has released two decisions on the future of mining in the Powder River Basin. The basin, which includes portions of Wyoming and Montana, produces 43 percent of the nation’s coal. The administration said it would not allow new leasing to take place in the area, citing climate change impacts. Ongoing mining operations, which are expected to last through 2041, would not be affected.

The Bureau of Land Management has made it official Tuesday — coal leasing will end in the Powder River Basin by 2041. The move follows a court order in a federal lawsuit, Western Organization of Resource Councils et al. v. BLM. The judge on the case directed the BLM to redo its environmental analysis, and include both no-leasing and a limited coal leasing alternatives. As a result of that analysis, the BLM said it has determined that “additional leasing of BLM-administered coal is not necessary, based on the current analysis in the Final Supplemental EIS. The analysis indicates that operating...

Attorney General Ken Paxton sued BlackRock, State Street Corporation, and Vanguard Group, three of the largest institutional investors in the world, for conspiring to artificially constrict the market for coal through anticompetitive trade practices. Over several years, the three asset managers acquired substantial stockholdings in every significant publicly held coal producer in the United States, thereby gaining the power to control the policies of the coal companies. Using their combined influence over the coal market, the investment cartel collectively announced in 2021 their commitment to weaponize their shares to pressure the coal companies to accommodate “green energy” goals. To achieve...

Prices for generators, transformers, and other utility components are soaring. Hurricane Helene (and now Milton) will make the problem worse.. The reports about the damage caused by Hurricane Helene and the amount of water dumped on the region by the storm are gobsmacking. Last week, my friend, Jimmy Fortuna, an energy industry executive who lives in Asheville, sent me a text. He said, “Brother, I’m telling you, it’s like God’s own bulldozer went down these mountains and valleys. Maybe it did. Whole sections of town in Asheville and some whole towns in the mountains around us turned into mud flats.”...

London’s High Court on Friday quashed a planning permission for the UK’s first new coal mine in three decades, ruling that the permit was unlawful as it hadn’t considered the emissions from burning the fuel. Earlier this year, climate campaigners, including Friends of the Earth, challenged the approval of the coal mining project. The UK’s previous Conservative government approved in December 2022 the Woodhouse Colliery project in Whitehaven, northwest England.. The project to mine metallurgical coal, the one used for steelmaking, will be required to support steelmaking.. However, the new Labour government in the UK pulled in July its support...

Washington, Arizona, Colorado, California, and Oregon would see the biggest number of stores flipped to C&S.. Kroger and Albertsons have released a list of hundreds of stores that would be divested to C&S Wholesale Grocers if federal regulators approve its proposed $24.6 billion merger deal, and the states with the largest numbers include Washington, Arizona, and Colorado. Under the proposal, Kroger and Albertsons would divest stores in Washington (124), Arizona (101), Colorado (91), California (63), Oregon (62), Illinois (35), Texas (28), Nevada (16), and Alaska (18). Several states would see 10 or fewer stores divested, including: Idaho (10), New Mexico...

Coloradans will pay nearly three times more per kilowatt hour during peak times through Sept. 30.. DENVER – Xcel Energy customers in Colorado with smart meters will start paying more for electricity during certain hours this summer starting Monday, a measure company officials said is aimed at saving “everybody money.” The "time of use" pricing rate, which went into effect June 1, means Xcel customers will pay more than two times the price per kilowatt hour (kWh) if using energy during peak time hours, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays. Customers using electricity within that timeframe will see...

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said the latest Bureau of Land Management proposal is the agency’s determination that coal leasing in the Powder River Basin will not be permitted past 2041. The BLM’s final supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) and proposed amendment to its Buffalo Field Office land use plan selects the “no leasing” alternative in the Buffalo Coal Resource Management Plan Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. Release of the final SEIS and proposed amendment opens a 30-day public protest period. Gordon said the decision is part of Biden’s “partisan, vindictive, and politically motivated war on America’s abundant, cheap, efficient, and consistent...

Democrat Climate Change Cult: Ban Everything! Ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) nations have agreed to eliminate all coal-fired power plants by 2035. The countries that are members of the Group of Seven (G7) are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. This declaration was made by Andrew Bowie, a UK minister at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, during an interview in Turing, Italy. “We do have an agreement to phase out coal in the first half of the 2030s,” Bowie said. “This is, by...

The Biden Administration’s regulations are coming so fast and furious that it’s hard even to keep track, but we’re trying. On Thursday the Environmental Protection Agency proposed its latest doozy—rules that will effectively force coal plants to shut down while banning new natural-gas plants. “With the announcement today, the power sector can make planning decisions with a full array of information,” EPA’s press release declares. Translation: Get moving with the green-energy transition because we’re determined to eliminate fossil-fuel power. Barack Obama’s regulation spurred a wave of coal plant closures. Now President Biden is trying to finish the job by tightening...

On Thursday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi denied that the Biden administration is attempting to shut down the coal industry or slow any industry down, and stated that the issue is “about how do we speed up to a stronger economy, a more durable economy, and one that, frankly, puts less pollution into the sky?” Host Connell McShane asked, “[C]oal executives, for the most part, are coming out and saying this — we can’t meet this. So, the real goal here is to kind of shut our industry down. Is that what’s happening?” Zaidi...

Carbon sequestration has become Republicans’ most popular answer to climate change, with GOP governors across western states pumping massive stores of concentrated CO2 into underground chambers. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, who chairs the Western Governors Association, currently leads the charge to his state’s detriment as a carbon-powerhouse and leading coal producer. Last week, lawmakers in Wyoming heard from members of the CO2 Coalition who challenged Governor Gordon’s pledge to decarbonize the energy-intensive state with carbon capture programs. Dr. William Happer, the founder of the CO2 Coalition, compared such efforts to a “religion” before the Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands...

United States exporters of thermal coal earned more than $5 billion in 2023 as they shipped out more than 32.5 million metric tons ... The thermal coal export earnings were the second-highest since 2017, following 2022's $5.7 billion. The total volumes were the highest since 2018 and came as U.S. power producers cut the amount of coal used in electricity generation to the lowest this century, ... The diverging trends between shrinking domestic coal use and robust coal exports open the United States to charges of hypocrisy .... Between 2013 and 2023, U.S. coal-fired power generation dropped by 57.5% from...