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Jan 10
Love10

A Twelve-Pack for 2023

By Energy Rant No Comments
A Twelve-Pack for 2023 Last year Las Vegas booked my predictions at 1:1.5 odds. This year I’m being more aggressive and expect something closer to a 3:1 weighted average. Below, I include my estimates for each forecast. Ukraine War I’ll get the tough stuff out of the way first. The Ukraine war will not end peacefully with a desirable outcome as long as the bipartisan U.S. congress keeps laundering money through the military-industrial complex (and others) in this proxy war with Russia. (Odds: 1:2) There is no exit strategy. Thirty billion here. Forty billion there. When that runs out, we’ll…
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Oct 26
Love0
Wild Energy Ride

Next Up: A Wild Energy Ride

By Energy Rant One Comment
It has been a frothy year for the energy industry, and it will continue well into next year and beyond. How far? Heh heh. Let’s start with coal. After plummeting 30% in 2020, consumption bounced back, gaining 35% in 2021. Doing the math, that doesn’t quite get coal back to 2019 consumption. Coal plants are still closing at a breakneck pace, so consumption in the United States is bound to decline in the long haul, but will load balancers and utilities be able to keep the lights on in 2030? This is a concern to me because no source of…
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Apr 16
Love0

Question: Carbon and Benefits? Answer: Efficiency

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” and being as objective as possible are how I roll. If you feel otherwise, by all means, let me know. Driving across Southern Minnesota recently, a billboard like the image nearby caught my eye. I thought this would be worth looking into to see what they have to say. As I expected, the paper it promotes is jaded against wind energy. But what arguments do they make? Are they legitimate? Wind is Fuel When thinking about wind-driven power generation, it has a lot of hurdles to overcome to be cost-effective. One near the top of the…
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Nov 14
Love0

Regulating Deregulation and Wind’s Other Big Subsidy

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
Last week we examined the startup of deregulation, why a competitive market for electricity is difficult and early failures. This week, we look at the price impacts and some long-term implications of deregulation. It seemed to me that deregulation of the electricity market had been a disaster: bankruptcies, soaring prices, and most recently, stranded baseload assets. There was a lot of evidence in that, but lately, prices have improved, but other challenges are emerging. Deregulation’s Impact on Pricing I realized that searching for comprehensive data showing the impact on electricity costs for regulated versus deregulated is impossible. Lucky for you,…
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Dec 15
Love0

Wind Energy – Finally Going Somewhere

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
This week’s post features a strong shot of irony.  South Dakota ranks 49th of 51 jurisdictions (50 states plus the District of Columbia) in ACEEE’s 2014 Energy Efficiency Scorecard report, yet its citizens overwhelmingly support wind power.  And when I say they support wind power, they act on it – not “yes, I love it ”.  This isn’t a “do you support renewable energy” question – which, as discussed in last week’s post about freeridership, is a question loaded with social pressure.  No.  South Dakotan’s aren’t slaves to political correctness; nor are they complainers.  I know because I went to…
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Jun 09
Love0

Carbon Abatement – Is that Pulp in Your Teeth?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
Easy peasy lemon squeezy, to repeat a phrase of one rant fan a while back – that describes carbon slayers’ victory laps in the past couple years.  I am talking about the natural gas boom introduced by the development to near perfection of the hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling methods used on private land, mostly east of the Mississippi River.  Pile on top of this last Monday’s release of the EPA’s carbon goals by 2030, and we have about three or four weeks of blog material.  So, let’s get started. Natural gas is a wonderfully versatile energy source.  It doesn’t…
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Sep 23
Love0

Threat to Electric Utilities – Pass the Lemonade

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Nothing lasts forever, or in some cases, even a couple years.  The race to displace current products and services of any stripe is rather obvious, except there will never be a replacement for the McDonald’s hamburger, and running shoes haven’t improved in 20 years.  In recent weeks, I have seen perhaps a half dozen articles regarding growing threat to electric utilities.  In the most recent article I’ve seen on the subject from The Wall Street Journal, Nick Akins, Chief Executive with AEP, sums it up cleverly and succinctly: “Am I going to just sit here and take it and ultimately…
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Jul 01
Love0

Wind Power Wind Bags

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Politics exert major forces on energy policies and fortunately, few oppose energy efficiency.  Therefore, I strongly suggest our industry build high walls around energy efficiency and not let controversial things like climate change and even in some cases, renewable energy, into our sandbox.  Case in point: this recent opinion piece by a guy from the Heartland Institute regarding wind power and corresponding rebuttal letters published in The Wall Street Journal. You may recall that about a year ago, I wrote about a scandal contrived by Peter Gleick, outspoken global warming PhD guy, where he impersonated insiders from the Heartland Institute,…
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May 18
Love0

Law of Gravity, Repealed

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Stimulus, Sustainability 2 Comments
Yay!  I’m outside working on my computer for the first time this year.  Alright, who cares? Every week I plow through news-clipping services to see what is going on, to build my topic list, which is piling up faster than the weeks pass.  This week I had to shelve 4-5 great topics to again take on the recently arisen climate bill. Many huge utilities and other giant energy users and associations are lauding the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill.  These institutions include the American Wind Association, Duke Energy, Dow Chemical, Florida Power and Light, T. Boone Pickens, National Resources Defense Council, Steelworkers Union,…
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Apr 27
Love0

Greenpeace – Don’t Let Facts Get in the Way

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Renewable Energy, Sustainability No Comments
Back in the day when I was in the nuclear Navy, Greenpeace was not so infrequently pulling stunts like running their zodiacs up on the top of submarine hulls to make their unfounded statements of radiation releases to the environment.  Since 9/11, you can bet they stopped this practice.  Even back in the early 1990s the hatch was guarded by a burly guy sporting a short barrel shotgun with the largest shell chamber I’ve ever seen.  Stopping power.  The fact is, the US Navy runs the cleanest nuclear plants in the world with thousands of operating reactor YEARS and not…
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We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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