Electricity | Grist

If past is prologue, this new regulation will drive innovation and exciting new technologies that can be adapted into other products.

A Penny Saved Is… 0
Posted 1 week, 4 days ago
Intermittency and you

Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power? 164
Posted 3 weeks, 1 day ago On Friday, Matt Yglesias had a post making the point that only socialist state control seems capable of creating a robust nuclear power industry. It's a valid point -- the only countries building nuke plants these days are the ones where governments are making the decisions. David Frum replied with a post containing a series of wildly overbroad assertions ranging from false to highly misleading, with no evidence or links to support them. (Nuclear power does impressive things to conservatives' error-to-word ratios.) Matt replied, and in the course of doing so let this drop: "That said, obviously you need a certain amount electricity that can be relied upon irrespective of how windy it is or whether the sun is shining. So I’d happily see the nuclear share of the pie grow at the expense of coal and oil as the provider of that baseload electricity." This notion has really grabbed the public imagination and been embraced as conventional wisdom: that the grid can only incorporate a limited amount of renewable energy, thus we need coal and nuclear power plants for baseload electricity. Clean energy skeptics chant the word "baseload" like a talisman. There's far less to the claim than meets the eye, though.
Rural Electric Cooperatives: Efficiency measures more important 0
Posted 1 month ago
President Obama announces $3.4 billion investment to spur transition to smart energy grid 0
Posted 1 month ago As the Senate debates the Kerry-Boxer climate bill in Washington, President Obama travelled to Arcadia, Florida to announce a $3.4 billion investment in to modernize the U.S. energy grid. Grist shares the official White House press release on the president’s new smart grid proposal.
Listen to the coal guy!

Why it’s better to invest in efficiency than to hold electricity rates down 9
Posted 1 month ago A utility representative, of all people, recognizes the important truth that it is better to give consumers efficiency than to give them cheaper electricity.
Serious vehicle to grid advocates don't make magical claims, given realistic V2G potential.

2-way connections between electric cars and grid have amazing potential that needs no exaggeration 1
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago
Local fetishists still wrong

We need transmission to solve global warming 15
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago The new version of Energy Self-Reliant States manages to duplicate the fallacies of their previous reports, and adds new ones.
The enemy of the human wallet

Report finds massive hidden energy costs, mostly from coal 5
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago A new report from the National Research Council on the "hidden costs of energy" is, frankly, stunning. In a sane world, it would be headline news.
Amanda Little talks energy on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ 0
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Short circuits

Our old electric grid is no match for our new green energy plans 4
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago To understand how electricity gets from a coal plant or wind turbine to our living rooms and cubicles, Amanda Little descended below the heaving streets of Manhattan for a first-hand look at the power grid. It wasn't pretty -- and it doesn't bode well for our transition to a clean energy future.
The first step is admitting you have a problem

Confessions of a fossil-fuel addict 2
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago You are right now completely surrounded by products of fossil fuels, from the screen you're reading to what you're wearing, eating, probably even sitting on. This same revelation sent Amanda Little on a surprising cross-country journey as she tried to come to grips with America's energy system. Read about it in an exclusive excerpt from her new book Power Trip.
Meet the star of ‘No Impact Man’: No Impact Woman 3
Posted 3 months ago
Michelle Conlin is the real star of the No Impact Man movie, dragged by her husband into a year of eco-asceticism. The whole arrangement is an elaborate publicity stunt, but it works on the screen.
Removing roadblocks to the growth of renewables 0
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago
CURRENT EVENTS

If the site is right, researchers could bring tidal energy to Puget Sound 1
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago
The problem with wind power—one of them, anyway—lies in the phrase "fickle as the wind." Ocean tides, by comparison, are a paragon of reliability. Grist's Jon Hiskes spent a day on the Puget Sound recently talking with researchers building a pilot tidal energy project.
Everyone's got a lobbyist

Tally of interests on climate bill tops a thousand 0
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago
More than 460 new businesses and interest groups jumped into lobbying Congress on global warming in the weeks before the House neared its historic vote on climate change legislation, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of just-disclosed lobbying records shows.
Why CO2 regulation will lead to lower electricity prices 2
Posted 4 months ago
Excluding those who question whether we need a greenhouse gas policy at all, the debate is fundamentally one about where certainty is most important. What all agree on is that uncertainty is unacceptable. But do we really have that much uncertainty?
Talk to me, baby

“Smart” appliances that talk to the grid are coming your way soon 5
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago
The Jetsons are coming to life as dishwashers, washing machines, and other home appliances begin to talk to each other and to the electricity grid in an effort to manage and reduce energy use.
A tale of two emissions factors

How much CO2 do our nation’s coal and gas plants actually produce? 7
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago
Since 1960, the natural gas power fleet has become less and less CO2 intensive, while the coal fleet has become more and more CO2 intensive. What explains this trend? One word: competition.
New energy at DOE

Autos, smart grid and clean tech: DOE turns on the money 2
Posted 5 months ago
Last week the Department of Energy released part of the $25 billion in loans provided for through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, included in Section 136 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The delay in releasing these funds had been one of the longest running scandals in clean tech policy. Upon taking office, the Obama Administration vowed to expedite their release and Secretary Steven Chu had made finalizing rules needed to administer the program a key priority. In the first installment of the loans, Tesla, the VC-backed California maker of an all-electric sports car, founded by Ebay veterans, will receive $465 million to make its compact, all-electric Model S sedan. Ford will receive $5.9 billion to retool 11 factories across five states to improve the overall fuel efficiency of its fleet. Finally, Nissan will receive $1.6 billion to retool a factory in Smyrna, Tennessee, to make an electric vehicle that is being developed and initially manufactured in Japan. The remainder of the money will be released next year.
Breaching the dams

How fast can the US electric sector reform? 8
Posted 5 months ago
Is the electric sector capable of rapid, large scale reform? Many policies implicitly assume the answer to that question is No, especially when it comes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emission control.

The result is a policy conversation that hinges on the assumption that it is hard to change. How much must we spend to accelerate new technology? How many decades should we allow for a phase-in of new regulations?

As it turns out, the industry can change -- and indeed, has changed -- at a much faster pace than you might think. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it turns out to be quick and fairly painless to replace meaningful fractions of our power fleet in very short time frames.