Permitting

The $50 Million Mile: Natural Gas Infrastructure Challenges, Opportunities

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It is difficult to exaggerate the scale of the changes that the burgeoning natural gas and oil production in the US are setting in motion, so some numbers help set the tone. Numbers like $50 million a mile, and $70 billion a year.

Those are two of the figures cited by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Robert Bryce, who writes about and studies the energy sector for the think tank. Breaking Energy spoke with him at the US Association for Energy Economics conference in Austin, Texas in November, and he detailed some of the opportunities and the challenges for the natural gas sector. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 4, 2012 at 12:45 PM

Who Owns the Energy?

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The question of natural resource ownership has been answered in many different ways over the course of human history, with compromises between the interests of societies and individual developers taking on a variety of forms.

While it often seems that the basic parameters of ownership and regulation of ownership have been sorted out in places like the US, comparatively small evolutions in the perception of these relationships can have outsized impacts on specific energy projects or companies. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 18, 2012 at 10:30 AM

10 Most Expensive Energy Projects in the World

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Estimates vary widely on its cost, but it’s thought the Three Gorges Dam is the most expensive hydroelectric project ever built.

 /  Published August 28, 2012 at 10:45 AM

FERC Licenses First U.S. Wave Power Project

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Ocean Power Technologies has gained approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the complete build-out of its wave power station off the southern Oregon Coast, the first wave power station to be licensed in the U.S.

FERC granted a 35-year license for the wave power station to OPT subsidiary Reedsport OPT Wave Park, LLC. OPT said in a news release that construction of the first PowerBuoy® is almost completed and should be deployed 2.5 miles off the Reedsport coast later this year. After the first buoy is deployed, OPT will build up to 9 additional buoys and their grid connection infrastructure – assuming additional funding and the remaining regulatory approvals are obtained. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 27, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Wind Energy Works: United States Celebrates 50 GW Milestone

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Over the last decade, wind energy has catapulted from a fringe energy option to an economic, mainstream, $50 billion a year industry that employs 300,000 people globally. Over the last decade, technology advancements have driven the cost of wind down 60%, while the price of oil has surged over 350%. In fact, 40% of new power installations in America over the past five years have been wind energy. The success of wind power has become so widespread in the US that even companies like Walmart, Anheuser Busch and Nestle are becoming power producers using the technology.

Last week, the United States celebrated the milestone of 50 GW of installed wind power, demonstrating wind’s value as a mainstream, domestic source of energy for America. Fifty gigawatts is big: it’s enough capacity to power 12.8 million American homes, or meet the electricity demands of Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia, Alabama and Connecticut through wind power alone. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 17, 2012 at 1:00 PM

Sign Of The (Slow) Times: PJM Seeks to Cancel Planned Transmission

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Grid operator PJM Interconnection said its staff will recommend dropping the Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) and the Mid Atlantic Power Pathway (MAPP) from its regional transmission projects.

PJM’s planning process looks 15 years ahead to identify transmission upgrades needed to maintain stable power systems. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 15, 2012 at 11:30 AM

Addressing the Blackouts in India: One Company’s Perspective

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Indian passengers sit on the railway tracks near the platform of Sealdah train station waiting for the resumption of services during a power failure in Kolkata on July 31, 2012.

Even on a good day, millions of people in India are without access to electricity or deal with power outages on a fairly regular basis. However, the massive power failures that hit the country during the last days of July were striking in how widespread they were. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 2, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Nuclear Concerns, Policy Fuel California Energy Storage Boom

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California energy regulators believe energy storage capacity could reach up to 8,000 MW by 2020, and could be further accelerated by renewables targets and the ongoing closure of one of two of the state’s nuclear power plants.

Michael Gravely, deputy chief of R&D at the California Energy Commission said he anticipated “fairly substantial amount of increase in services” in energy storage to balance the grid and integrate renewables over the next decade. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 3, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Hawaiian Cable Project ‘May Boost Hopes’ for US Offshore Wind

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A plan to build a 100-mile undersea cable linking power grids on Hawaii’s islands would help meet the state’s ambitious renewable-energy goals, reduce its heavy dependence on imported oil, and cut electric bills for consumers.

It could also become an important test case for the ability of existing grids to rely on power from renewable sources. If it proves, as its backers hope, that grids can take more power from renewable sources than the maximum levels currently assumed by the industry, that would be a big boost to plans for offshore wind farms along the U.S. East Coast. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 25, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Energy Book Review: ‘The Eskimo and The Oil Man’ by Bob Reiss

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In retrospect, it isn’t surprising that there is a market for writing that fits nicely into the niche between the analytical musings of the Economist and the heart-thumping pace of a Jason Bourne thriller.

A little bit populist and much faster paced than traditional writing about current events, while still retaining a seriousness of purpose but steering clear of the polemics of a Michael Moore documentary, the idea for this generation books is fact that reads like fiction. Perhaps it is “a thriller for the CNN generation” or, given reading patterns in the US, just as likely an “Agatha Christie for the CSPAN generation.” Keep reading →

 /  Published May 25, 2012 at 11:30 AM
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