To all of the superlatives attached to Superstorm Sandy, add power outages.
Ten million customers in 21 states lost power in the wake of the storm, by far the most in the history of the U.S. utility industry, and well in excess of the 7 million whose electricity got knocked out in Hurricane Irene in 2011, the storm with the second-biggest impact. Keep reading →
Power prices are too low. That’s what utility executives believe. They need prices to increase for their generators to return healthy earnings. Otherwise, they will have to retire plants and exit the market.
Dominion Resources decided not to wait. They recently announced plans to retire their Wisconsin-based Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station 21 years early. Dominion concluded they would not be able to achieve any earnings for their 556-megawatt unit, they might even lose money and they could not find anyone to buy it. They had no choice but to shutter and decommission Kewaunee. Keep reading →
As some of the world’s foremost energy experts from business, academia and government gathered in Austin, Texas for a major energy conference, the Northeastern US was still reeling from Hurricane Sandy’s devastation that took lives, homes and disrupted power and fuel delivery for millions of people. This stark reminder of how fragile US energy infrastructure can be makes the conference theme, “Transition to a Sustainable Energy Era: Opportunities and Challenges,” all the more timely and important.
The 31st US Association of Energy Economics/International Association of Energy Economics North American Conference kicked off this morning with an opening plenary session that was appropriately titled, “Putting the ‘Sustainable’ in Sustainable Energy Future.” Keep reading →
The US energy sector has been a rare bright spot through much of the past four years as first financial firms and then the rest of the global economy has struggled to recover from a grinding and often jobless recession.
Statistics about jobs vary, but any region with significant oil or gas resources has noted the uptick in employment in those sectors as development has accelerated. The most recent numbers from Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry, for example, show core employment in the Marcellus Shale developments in the state up by 177.5% from first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2012, even as the state’s overall employment level has lagged that of the rest of the country. Keep reading →
Economists at the National Economists Conference in February 2012.
Every attendee at the USAEE/IAEE conference this week has something important to add, from the university students giving their first professional presentations and preparing to enter a rapidly expanding industry to the former ambassadors and corporate chiefs gathered to headline sessions and lunches at the event Austin. Keep reading →
PJM’s newly filed plan to comply with FERC’s Order 1000 on transmission planning stresses public-policy input, a new mechanism for the submission of project proposals, and a transparent process for the review of transmission plans.
The eastern and Midwestern grid operator said its filing is designed to boost competition, increase the participation of states and others, and to incorporate policy requirements such as renewable portfolio standards. Keep reading →
The US warfighter of today is wired. And batteries have to be included.
Enter SWIPES. Keep reading →
The major investment banks remain heavily engaged in the energy markets, hedging fuel prices and even producing energy for their own or their clients’ benefit. But Brad Hintz, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. research analyst who tracks the investment banking and securities industries, told Breaking Energy that the big banks are also positioning themselves for potential regulatory changes which will force the launch of a national carbon-trading market.
“Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays are all major energy traders,” Hintz observed. “They are the banking giants in that space, and they – along with the commodities exchanges – provide the risk management services needed to balance demand and supply in the global energy markets.” Keep reading →
From the start Heather Zichal, chief energy adviser to President Barack Obama, struck Elgie Holstein as an unusual Washington player.
He got to know her when Zichal was a Congressional aide for Senator John Kerry, a position she held from 2002 to 2008. One day, she sought out Holstein, a veteran policy adviser who had served in the Clinton administration, because she needed information on refinery economics. Keep reading →
The past few years have brought a series of disruptions that have thrown economic models for the energy business out the window and prompted widespread reevaluations of what matters most for one of the world’s largest business sectors.
Each year the US Association for Energy Economics gathers top analysts from across the sector for a conference that highlights the latest research that drives decision making and future planning for billions upon billions of dollars in investment. This year’s USAEE/IAEE North American Conference is the 31st such event, and is happening during the climax of a high-stakes election season that has brought both the job-making potential of energy investment to the fore and highlighted the problems that can result when forecasts go awry. Keep reading →
