Efficiency is the mantra of modern business, but many companies appear to have trouble with their math when it comes to energy.
Energy efficiency has become an integral part of corporate decision-making in major economies worldwide, but efficiency projects face a continuing battle with other corporate priorities for investment even though they save money in the long run, a new global business survey shows. Keep reading →
A new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule is either a rush to regulate or chickens coming home to roost. But it’s certainly going to raise your electric bill.
EPA’s most expensive power plant clean air initiative ever is scheduled for a final decision on implementation in November. Opponents say its hasty enactment will raise electricity prices 20-25% in coal-dependent regions like the Midwest and South. Proponents say the rule was authorized in 1990 and has been in process since 2000, giving industry decades to prepare, and areas with big costs got two decades of cheap power by avoiding pollution controls. Keep reading →
Energy researchers have warned that serious progress in industry-transforming research could founder.
And if the U.S. isn’t careful, it may even win in energy research but lose the business it creates. Keep reading →
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission‘s (NRC) fundamental approach to regulating safety is being questioned in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Japan, not just by the usual nuclear critics but by the commissioners themselves.
And that could mean big new costs for US nuclear plants – and electric ratepayers. Keep reading →
At the intersection of Thomas Edison and the Internet lies the smart grid, the energy industry’s newest effort to enhance the effectiveness of their power lines.
Integrating the multi-directional data capabilities of the Internet into the U.S.’s thousands of miles of transmission wires, still based on the 130-year-old system Edison designed to distribute electricity, remains one of the smart grid effort’s biggest challenges. Keep reading →
