The Quad Report

By Kennedy Maize The Trump administration is working overtime to transmogrify the nation’s dirtiest fuel into what the president calls his “beautiful clean coal.”  The White House has mobilized the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Tennessee Valley authority to boost its vision of restoring coal’s past glory. It isn’t working. The … More Trump administration labors to make ugly coal beautiful

By Kennedy Maize A major U.S. energy policy disconnect is developing over locating data centers to serve the promising but still infant artificial intelligence business. The federal government, driven by the Trump White House and many conventional electric utility generation and transmission companies, are boosting the nascent AI tech industry and its electricity gobbling data … More As the hyperscale data center backlash gathers momentum…

By Kennedy Maize Last month, iconic Texas-based technology giant Oracle Corp. announced a deal with California’s Bloom Energy to develop a behind-the-meter 2.45-GW artificial intelligence  data center in the New Mexico desert, dubbed Project Juniper, powered by Bloom’s fuel cells. The announcement said, “This updated power design will replace Project Jupiter’s previously planned gas turbines … More Fuel cells and data centers: a natural mix?

By Kennedy Maize Donald Trump’s voluntary war on oil-rich Iran is having what the fossilized gang in Washington never anticipated: a global surge in renewable energy, including in the U.S. The impact of the war on oil supplies and prices has produced a dramatic shift to wind and solar that may be permanent. Energy analyst … More Iran war supercharges worldwide renewables

By Kennedy Maize The PJM Interconnection, the oldest and largest U.S. independent electric transmission system operator, on Wednesday (May 6) announced it has launched an effort to reform its troubled and controversial competitive energy capacity market. The announcement came just five days after PJM named insider David Mills its new president and chief executive officer. … More PJM launches capacity market reform process

By Henry Sokolski Last week, a month-long review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) began at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), a U.S.-funded service that reaches more than one million viewers in the Middle East, asked me whether the NPT keeps nuclear weapons from spreading. For more … More Guest Commentary: Can the NPT keep nuclear weapons from spreading?

By Kennedy Maize In a largely unnoticed move last month (April 20) President Trump issued five separate but intimately connected “presidential determinations” under the terms of the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) essentially claiming broad control over the entire U.S. energy economy. In the announcements, Trump also cited his January 20, 2025 Executive Order 14156 … More Power grab: Trump asserts control over all U.S. energy

By Kennedy Maize The most mature U.S. small modular nuclear reactor vendor — NuScale Power — and a politically connected firm planning to build perhaps the largest reactor project in the U.S. to power an enormous Texas data center — Fermi America — have both suffered recent, major, possibly existential blows.  NuScale and Fermi, both … More Trouble bubbles up for NuScale and Fermi America

By Kennedy Maize The Trump administration’s Interior Department April 17 took steps to add and redistribute water in the drought-stricken Colorado River system, largely aimed at protecting hydro-electric generation from Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Meade behind Hoover Dam. Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation is ordering a major withdrawal of water from … More Interior orders a short-term Colorado River fix

By Kennedy Maize A group of nine Midwestern and Southern electric utilities, facing the prospect of demand for increased high-voltage transmission, are asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (EL-26-58-000) to render a key provision of long-standing commission Order 1000 — competition in new electric transmission projects — a dead letter. Calling themselves the “grid acceleration … More Transmission competition challenge faces FERC