The Quad Report

By Kennedy Maize As the U.S. Senate moves toward a final vote on groundbreaking energy project permitting legislation, Donald Trump continues to tilt at windmills. The windmills continue to win. The Senate Monday (Nov. 11) took a small bipartisan step toward passing a comprehensive bill that would streamline federal permitting of energy and infrastructure projects, … More Despite Trump, Senate permitting bill, wind power both advance

By Kennedy Maize Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city (pop. 577,222), has taken the first steps to expel Investor-owned utility We Energies and replace it with a municipal power system. The Milwaukee Common Council, the governing body, last Friday (Nov. 6) approved spending $1.35 million to study the feasibility of acquiring We Energies assets. The vote was … More Milwaukee moves to oust We Energies and municipalize

By Kennedy Maize El Niño is doing for the man-made, federally owned, drought-stricken Colorado River System what Uncle Sam can’t. Thanks to torrential rain in the four-corners region of the Southwest, the water level of Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam in Coconino County, Ariz., by Nov. 4 had risen 17 feet in the … More El Niño arrives to rescue the Colorado River

By Kennedy Maize Global demand for oil will peak in about the next four years and then start declining, leaving 20% of the world’s oil refineries starved and facing closure, according to a new study from the energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. “For the refining industry,” Woodmac advises, “hope is not a strategy.” Analyst Alan … More Woodmac: world oil shakeout coming with peak oil demand

By Kennedy Maize In a bid to save their controversial $67 billion merger, Virginia-based Dominion Energy, the seller, and Florida’s NextEra Energy, the buyer, have agreed to accept many of the conditions the staff of the Virginia State Corporation Commission laid out last month as needed to protect consumers. The merger would create a mammoth company, … More Dominion-NextEra merger parties offer Virginia a deal

By Kennedy Maize After years of wobbling uncertainty, a $1 billion, 625-MW natural gas combined-cycle power plant planned for far northwestern Wisconsin near the city of Superior, not far from Duluth, Minn., has been officially pronounced dead. The death notice for the Nemadji Trail Energy Center (NTEC) came in a letter Oct. 28 to the … More Wisconsin gas power plant project dies a lingering death

By Kennedy Maize Although still in its infancy, quantum computing has arrived and is making an impact on energy, according to a new report from energy research company Wood Mackenzie. The report — “The Quantum Disruption of Energy” – says that “Quantum computing has moved from the lab into live energy infrastructure, and the global race … More Is quantum computing a key to modern energy?

By Kennedy Maize Trump administration policies repealing previous U.S. initiatives designed to combat global warming and climate change, which the White House has billed as a benefit to society, will actually cost the nation dearly. That’s the finding of an upcoming study from Resources for the Future (RFF), a respected Washington economic and environmental non-profit … More Scoping the high costs of Trump’s climate policies

By Kennedy Maize New research by a team led by the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey has found that humans inhabited an area now part of the White Sands National Park in New Mexico more than 20 thousand years ago during what is known as the “Last Glacial Maximum,” (LGM) the planet’s last ice age. … More New research: rapid climate change bedeviled mankind millennia ago

By Yoel Guzansky and Henry Sokolski Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has built his rule on two central pillars: security and prosperity. At the core is the simple concept that a modernized Saudi Arabia would also be a safer and more prosperous one. However, that promise is now under unprecedented strain. Repeated missile … More Guest commentary: Saudi nuclear program could outlive its government, plan accordingly