Energy

Solving The Energy Efficiency Puzzle

New report recommends ways that California can encourage more private financing of energy efficiency retrofits

Much of our efforts to reduce carbon emissions involves fairly complicated and advanced technologies.  Whether it’s solar panels, batteries, flywheels, or fuel cells, these technologies have typically required public support to bring them to scale at a reasonable price, along with significant regulatory or legal reforms to accommodate these new ways of doing old things, …

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Deep in the Heart of Texas

Some green patches in one of the reddest of the Red States.

The Texas AG’s office seems to do little else besides battle against EPA, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz is in the vanguard of anti-environmentalism.  Yet even in Texas there are some rays of hope.  While Texas is attacking the Clean Power Plan, the city of Houston is leading a coalition of cities defending it. Other …

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Mitigating the Climate Impacts of Aliso Canyon

Staff from California Air Resources Board released the Draft Aliso Canyon Methane Leak Climate Impacts Mitigation Program last week. While the program has yet to gain approval by the Board, the final version will probably not change much. Overall, the Draft Program signals ARB’s desire to take full advantage of the political will and financial …

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Guest Blogger David Spence: Why Some Electricity Markets Will Struggle With Decarbonization

David Spence is Professor of Law, Politics & Regulation at the University of Texas at Austin

Recently the New York Times published an article chronicling the financial problems experienced by one of the world’s premier developers of concentrated solar power (CSP) facilities. The financial headwinds facing CSP are a sign of a more fundamental problem electricity markets face: namely, capturing all of the important values we attach to electricity production. Most …

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Creating An Exit Strategy for Our Use of Natural Gas

To meet long-term greenhouse gas reduction goals, all fossil fuels have to go, even natural gas.

Coal is the climate’s Public Enemy #1. The use of natural gas has helped to ensure that the coal problem has not become even worse. Without natural gas, we would use more coal for space heating and for many more industrial processes than is currently the practice. Without natural gas, our reliance on coal for …

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Fukushima + 5

What’s happened since then?

Five years ago today, Japan was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami, resulting in the Fukushima reactor meltdowns.  Where do things stand today?  Here’s a quick wrap-up: Compensation.  TEPCO, the utility operating the reactors, now estimates that it will pay $56 billion in compensation to victims. Clean-up.  The plant has been stabilized, according to …

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Roberts Denies Mercury Stay

A state effort to suspend implementation fails.

Chief Justice Roberts turned down a request this morning to stay EPA’s mercury rule.  Until the past month, this would have been completely un-noteworthy, because such a stay would have been unprecedented.  But the Court’s startling recent stay of the EPA Clean Power Plan suggested that the door might have been wide open.  Fortunately, that …

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Risk Subsidies and the Future of Nuclear Power in the U.S.

Should We Take Into Account Government Subsidies that Reduce the Risks Borne by the Nuclear Industry as We Consider Our Energy Future?

As I’ve written about before, U.S. law massively subsidizes the nuclear power industry.  In particular, a law called the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act dramatically skews the incentives to develop nuclear plants, and to site them in places where there is a lot of risk, because it requires the public to bear much of the …

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Lessons from Aliso Canyon, Part II

Leaks in Regulation

  Today, Southern California Gas announced it has successfully and permanently stopped the methane leak at its Aliso Canyon storage site. This marks the (fingers-crossed) end of a multi-month environmental crisis in northwest Los Angeles, causing residents to move and schools to close. Earlier this month, I blogged about the possible lessons we could learn …

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Mitch McConnell’s “War on Coal Miners”

McConnell seems to care more about political payback than the miners’ welfare.

Mitch McConnell’s website trumpets that last fall he received  an award from the Washington Coal Club “for his work to defend Kentucky’s coal jobs, miners and their families.”  His concern for miners turns out not to be so deep.  As the Washington Post reported last week, he single-handedly blocked a measure to rescue health and pension benefits …

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