Though Duke and Progress Energy have been pursuing a merger for nearly a year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stalled it significantly this Wednesday claiming it would not allow for fair competition in local electricity markets.
The decision, based on FERC’s 1996 Merger Policy Statement, comes at a time of increasing consolidation and specialization in the energy industry and will set a new standard for future merger proposals. Keep reading →
The hydrofracking that has opened up America’s enormous natural gas resources is a marvel of modern technology, but keeping gas and flowback water from those wells from seeping into drinking water depends on a far more mundane science: cementing.
Cementing is used to seal well bores on- and off-shore, in all types of oil and gas wells, and integrity standards are well established. But those standards “are often difficult to attain,” said James Saiers, a professor of hydrology at Yale University, speaking at a Resources for the Future (RFF) forum on “Managing the Risks of Shale Gas.” Keep reading →
On her way from Washington DC to Ottowa, Alberta Premier Alison Redford stopped by the Canadian consulate in New York City on Tuesday to tell her side of the Keystone XL pipeline story.
She said she has no sense of the time line for Keystone XL and had no comment on the internal American regulatory process. Keep reading →
There are lots of reasons to love renewable energy. It’s homegrown and domestically produced. It provides long term stable pricing and is not subject to fluctuating fuel costs. It generates economic development for America’s heartland. It is constant and will never run out. And it’s clean. In order for America to harness the most amount of power from the wind and the sun, a stronger electricity grid is fundamental.
From the winds of the Great Plains to the desert sun of the Southwest, America has vast, untapped potential to generate low-cost renewable power. The Great Plains states – from North Dakota to Texas – possess the strongest wind resource of all developed countries. We have the potential to generate as much electricity annually from domestic renewable resources as the U.S. consumes as a whole – several times over. There is no lack of generation potential. The trick is getting the clean power to market. Keep reading →
Opponents of a new plan to open the Delaware River basin to natural gas drilling renewed their attack on the proposal, saying it fails to determine whether public water supplies will be contaminated by gas extraction.
Environmental groups said the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate regulator charged with maintaining water quality in the four-state basin, has ignored their calls for a cumulative impact study on whether aquifers would be polluted by toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (“fracking“), a process that has facilitated the current boom in obtaining gas from shale beds in many U.S. states. Keep reading →
It is a wonder sometimes that new energy infrastructure is ever built.
On a recent walk-through of a new tool devised to help renewable energy projects with permitting challenges that arise in Department of Defense reviews, the overriding impression was one of wonder. Complex maps and layered data showing flight routes, radar line-of-sight limitations and domestic US military installations left surprisingly scant available open land for project development, although projects that lie in restricted areas do get permitted by DoD. Keep reading →
Map of the best places in America for #wind #solar & other renewables: http://bit.ly/vJ8fcq Let’s get to work! NRDC
On November 1, the EPA released its much awaited study on the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing. It was immediately denounced by six oil and gas industry associations.
The EPA “has moved forward with data collection for the Study, ignoring both its commitment to and a Congressional direction to ensure transparency and stakeholder input,” the six industry associations, namely the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), the American Petroleum Institute (API), the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC), the US Oil & Gas Association, America’s Natural Gas Alliance (anga) and the Petroleum Equipment Suppliers Association (PESA), wrote in the letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Keep reading →
While it would be hard to call hydropower the forgotten renewable when it already produces seven percent of US electricity, the industry’s role as a technology driver with the same funding and financing challenges as other innovative sectors is often shortchanged when consumers and regulators imagine solar panels and wind turbines.
But the hydropower sector is an area of constant reinvention through technological innovation, National Hydropower Association executive director Linda Church-Ciocci told Breaking Energy at the recent US Association for Energy Economics summit in Washington, DC. Keep reading →
Review for EU confirms that EDF Energy’s nuclear fleet is robust and safe even under extreme conditions http://bit.ly/vf0Pu7 edfenergycomms
