Administration Leaks Inaccurate Report of US Electric Grid Hack

Friday night The Washington Post (WaPo) ran a More...

Natural Gas vs. Climate Change

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted by most of the nations in the world in 1997. Although Al Gore signed it, the US Senate never ratified it so it doesn’t bind us. However, the US is the only industrial nation to achieve the quotas established for it in the treaty. Between 1997 and 2012, the US reduce More...

Combating Climate Change - The Nuclear Option

“So, Tom, I understand that you are skeptical of science by consensus and don’t feel that there is yet a reliable model for predicting global temperatures given a particular level of CO₂ emissions. That would be fine if this were an academic discussion but the fate of life on earth as More...

What Vermont Employers Are Telling Us (about the need for natural gas beyond the pipeline)

"Every day we wait costs us $7,000!" the CEO emailed to my new company, NG Advantage. Turns out that trucking compressed natural gas (CNG) to his factory and using it to replace dirty #6 oil will reduce his fuel costs by almost half – mor More...

The Energy State of the Union Annotated

President Obama recognized the importance of natural gas and the new, disruptive technologies which have made at least 100 years of this fuel available to us; that's the good news from the State of the Union Address. The bad news is that the President appears to have learned a lot of wrong lesson More...

Good News for the New Year

The ethanol $.45/gallon tax subsidy is gone! Happy New Year. This could be a small opening wedge for both good energy and good fiscal policy. Bipartisan inaction (a techniques which Congress has mastered) let the 30 year old credit for corny ethanol, which cost us taxpayers $6 billion last year, More...

Smart Meters Enhance Physical Privacy

As a Board Member of the Stowe Electric Department, I get occasional questions about Smart Meters from my neighbors.

"About Smart Meters and privacy…" a woman began.

"So long as the data from the meter's encrypted," I began without letting her finish the question.

"Huh?" she More...

The Economics of Lowell Mountain Wind: The Video

This is the video from an interview I did on WCAX 6PM news last night. Darren Perron did a good job with his questions. As always on TV, there wasn't enough time to say everything I'd have like to have said. So two additional po More...

I’ll Be on @WCAX 6PM News Talking About Vermont Energy Policy

The live interview, which'll probably be around 6:20PM, is a followup to my post saying that, even though I think the Lowell Wind Project is bad economically and bad energy policy, those w More...

Green Mountain Power Sets Good Precedent on “Bad” Project

Green Mountain Power says that it will try to collect damages from those who obstruct its already-permitted and approved Lowell Mountain wind project. It would be a wonderful precedent for Vermont if the cost of post-permitting delays were born by those who cause the delays. There's no good r More...