If you’re like most people across the globe these days, you find yourself using computer-driven devices to communicate with business colleagues, clients, family members, friends, and other contacts throughout the day. Indeed, digital communication (including emails, text messages, calls via smart phones, online messaging, and the like) has grown rapidly over recent years, and… Keep reading →
Sometimes, amid the back and forth of discussions over energy policy, it’s helpful to talk about the real-world impacts of various policy choices. Right now in Pennsylvania, there’s a vigorous debate going on over a proposed natural gas severance tax that would supersede the state’s existing impact fee — vigorous because the impact fee has… Keep reading →
The energy industry is a source of technological innovation and remarkable engineering. From the use of advanced machinery to extract previously inaccessible volumes of natural gas and shale oil to the management of global projects and the benefits of real-time intelligence, pioneers abound in one of the world’s most important areas of commerce and economic… Keep reading →
By 2017, natural gas pipelines are projected to convert up to 32% of their pipeline capacity into the Northeast to support the bi-directional flow of natural gas out of the region to the South and West, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) December 2, 2014 report. It is well known that the increased production of natural gas in the shale plays of the Northeast have had a marked impact on the energy industry in the U.S. This EIA data shows us in hard numbers how drastic of an impact the shale boom has had on pipelines that historically transported natural gas into the Northeast: six pipelines transported 60% of natural gas into the Northeast in 2013, and 2013 volumes of gas transported into the Northeast on these six pipelines were 21%-84% lower than the volumes of gas they transported into the region just five years earlier. Several of these pipelines initiated the transition to handle bi-directional flows in 2013 and earlier this year.
The energy industry is many things, chief among them, a source of technological innovation and mobile communications. Indeed, far from the cinematic depiction of roughnecks and oil-smeared men in assorted hard hats, as well as truck drivers and workers with frayed shirt collars hauling propane across vast stretches of the Interstate, these same individuals are… Keep reading →
At the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), each project in our portfolio that comes online is an important achievement in our all-of-the-above energy strategy. In the five years since it issued its first conditional commitment, LPO has helped launch the utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar industry, deploy the next generation of concentrating solar power, revitalize the U.S. nuclear industry, commercialize cellulosic biofuels,… Keep reading →
During a discussion of the nexus of government and the energy industry at the USAEE/IAEE North American Conference in Anchorage, Alaska last week, Branko Terzic, Executive Director of the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions, pointed out that the average American does not know the cost of electricity. He suggested that a focus on greater transparency… Keep reading →
An App a Day: Keep the Chaos Away
By Bill StompThe energy industry is no stranger to technology. But, ironically, many technology professionals are strangers to the energy industry. Specifically, developers of applications for mobile devices – the authors of the purported tools that will improve operations, increase productivity and streamline logistics for a variety of companies – do not necessarily understand key aspects of the energy… Keep reading →