Fried Birds: Green Energy Involves Tradeoffs Too
The Ivanpah solar plant went online last week, but the cost to wildlife–particularly birds–won’t be known for at least two more years. Reports that the giant solar thermal array featuring more than 300,000 reflective panels and steam-driven turbine towers have been “killing and singeing” birds by heating the air to around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit near […]
January 23 Energy Roundup: Fracking Dishonesty; Interior Sec. Jewell Boots Press
Periodically, the Independence Institute’s Energy Policy Center will take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in energy stories from around the United States and abroad, and bring the best (and worst) of those stories to your attention. 1. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell may have violated Colorado Open Meetings Law […]
Emails Show EPA’s Denver “Listening Tour” Stop A Collaboration Between Agency, Environmentalist Orgs
Emails published this week by the Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay illustrate a pattern of coordination and cooperation between the Environmental Protection Agency and external environmentalist groups, including the use of at least one agency event to “pressure” an Xcel Energy executive at the Denver stop of a 2013 “listening tour”: The emails, obtained by […]
Emails Show EPA's Denver "Listening Tour" Stop A Collaboration Between Agency, Environmentalist Orgs
Emails published this week by the Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay illustrate a pattern of coordination and cooperation between the Environmental Protection Agency and external environmentalist groups, including the use of at least one agency event to “pressure” an Xcel Energy executive at the Denver stop of a 2013 “listening tour”: The emails, obtained by […]
FERC nominee Ron Binz the flipper
By Amy Oliver Cooke and Robert Applegate As Ron Binz campaigns to be confirmed as the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, much of the emphasis has been on his position as an activist for what he considers to be low or no carbon energy sources, predominantly Big Wind. (Forget the fact that wind […]
Natural gas double price of coal in Colorado
According to the most recent Form 10-K that Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest investor owned utility (IOU), filed with the Security and Exchange Commission dated December 31, 2011, electricity generation from natural gas was more than double the price of electricity generated from coal in Colorado. A table on page 18 of the report shows that […]
Fun with Fracking…
Energy Policy Center Director Amy Oliver Cooke has fun talking energy, especially when wearing a hot pink “Mothers In Love with Fracking” t-shirt. Thanks to Tom Barry of The Villager for this photograph and his article on the American For Prosperity (AFP) event that featured Dick Morris. AFP invited Amy to be the warm up […]
Disgraced EPA Official Joins Sierra Club
The disgraced former EPA regional official forced out after Senator James Inhoff (R-Oklahoma) posted a video of his enforcement philosophy for fossil fuel companies has found a home with the Sierra Club and its anti-coal campaign. EENews reports: Al Armendariz will take over leadership of the group’s “Beyond Coal” campaign office for Austin, Texas, on July […]
Energy by the Numbers
Sound energy policy must be rooted in fact rather than fiction and reason rather than emotion. Recently, the Institute for Energy Research released a well-researched, extensively-cited, easy-to-read primer on energy. We encourage you to read all 68 pages of Hard Facts: An Energy Primer. For those who want a cliff notes version, a few key […]
The Truth About Fracking and Water Scarcity
This post will be the first in series on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), in which Independence Institute research associate, Donovan Schafer, will take on specific issues related to fracking. In this post he focuses on the claim that fracking will deplete Colorado’s water resources. Enjoy! Two recent articles—one in the Denver Post and another in the […]
How Long Will Hick Equivocate on Energy Policy?
On energy policy, Governor-elect John Hickenlooper is perhaps the most masterful politician I’ve ever encountered. Coal, climate change, costs…these matters engender passions. They get people riled up. So it’s an awesome political trick that Hickenlooper has been elected mayor of this country’s finest city, and then governor of this country’s finest state, without revealing what […]
Xcel Changes Tune on “Recommended” Plan
A Quick Review of HB 1365… HB 1365, the Clean Air Clean Jobs Act, mandates that Xcel file a plan by August 15 2010 that would: be implemented by December 31, 2017; meet “reasonably foreseeable” state and federal air quality regulations; achieve at least 70% reductions in nitrogen oxides emissions from at least 900 megawatts […]