Energy Insights
This is Energy Insights—OurEnergyPolicy’s online platform where energy experts can share their unique outlook, offer feedback, and provide recommendations on how to solve the sector’s leading challenges. These Expert Insights help to inform and elevate the national conversation and improve the policymaking process.
We publish pieces from energy leaders across the public, private, and non-profit sectors who are committed to informing and elevating the national conversation, as well as improving the policymaking process. All U.S. energy professionals are welcome to participate. Through this platform, we make important and unique points, comments, and articles available to our broader network including journalists, key stakeholders, and congressional offices.
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The global heating catastrophe being fostered by humanity’s proclivity to burn fossil fuels for energy is an emergency. An all-hands-on-deck emergency. An employ-every-tool-in-the-toolbox emergency. Despite that, a myth persists that blocks humankind’s use of the most powerful possible energy source that won’t add to the CO2 load.
The energy source being vastly underemployed is nuclear. And the myth that stands in the way, so widely accepted as truth, is that “nuclear power is dangerous.”
The acceptance of this four-word declarative statement as truth is pretty widespread. People’s fears about nuclear energy emerged in the 1970s due to misinformation and media …
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Rural Centralia, Washington, and surrounding Lewis County have long struggled economically. From 1998 to 2014 the county added no jobs. The town’s largest employer, a coal mine, which employed 600 workers, closed in 2006. And operations at its other major employer, a coal-fired power plant have been reduced by half as the plant works toward a planned retirement in 2025.
As these events unfolded, they seemed like an economic death sentence to many in Centralia. But fate intervened. The mine’s and power plant’s owner, TransAlta Corporation, struck a deal with the state of Washington and environmental groups to fund an …
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The year 2021 has already outpaced 2020 in terms of extreme weather events. On the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida left more than 1 million residents without power for days and led to historic rain in New York City. In February, Texas was hit with a historic -2 degree (F) cold snap that left 4.4 million people without power, caused enormous strain on the power grid, and froze pipelines. At least 217 people were killed directly or indirectly by severe cold, and the damages are estimated to be about $21 billion. This year, California faces the triple threat …
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A federal Clean Energy Standard has been proposed as a policy approach to help meet climate change goals. The Biden Administration and some members of Congress are seeking to include it in budget reconciliation, and three variations of the policy have been introduced in Congress.
The policy seeks to drive electric power generation to net-zero carbon emissions by requiring utilities to include more clean energy over time. Standards like this already exist in 30 states as
renewable portfolio standards. Because of the similarities, many policy analysts believe a federal clean energy standard would be easy to implement. It would also …
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Experts have stated that we will need to use every tool at our disposal as well as create and deploy new energy technologies in order to meet the targets proposed in climate legislation. There are concerns that new solutions aren’t being advanced fast enough due to policy and financial barriers as well as the technological challenges inherent in innovation. OurEnergyPolicy hosted a webinar on June 2, 2021, to explore these questions and provide energy professionals with a better understanding of innovation and its role in the energy transition.
The panelists provided expertise on innovation with perspectives from government, finance, and …
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