NEI Nuclear Notes

Matt L. Wald At 4:00 p.m. US EDT, Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI, will deliver a speech in  Kennewick, Washington at Energy Northwest’s  2016 Public Power Forum.  The speech will be streamed live on the company's Facebook page . We're sharing an excerpt below. As always, please follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald. The energy business is sometimes prone to the silver bullet syndrome, the belief that there’s a single solution in hand if only we’d embrace it. Back when Spencer Abraham was secretary of energy, in the beginning of the Bush administration, he called it the “flavor of the month” club. He said that at various times, methanol, low temperature fuel cells, high temperature fuel cells, superconductors, thin film pv, ethanol from non-food sources, etc, etc, were going to save us. Today we’ve got new silver bullets, new flavors of the month. Well, I’d like to be unfashionable here. (Actually my wife assures me tha...

Tony Alexander On Tuesday, Anthony J. Alexander , President and CEO of FirstEnergy Corporation , addressed a standing-room only gathering at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce .  Part of the 2014 "CEO Luncheons" sponsored by the Chamber, Mr. Alexander spoke frankly about the enormous threats to the reliability and affordability of the nation's electricity supply.  The majority of these threats arise from government policies that distort electricity markets to force uneconomical energy sources into the mix and drive proven sources out.  He described these policies as replacing what works with what "sounds good." The full text of Mr. Alexander's speech is available from FirstEnergy.  A video recording of Mr. Alexander's speech is available on the Chamber web site.  His remarks begin at 1:03:43 in the recording.  Introductory comments of Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) precede Mr. Alexander's remarks.  The Chamber's blog post...

Congress is barely grazing over the energy issues that will doubtless absorb them more as the year goes along, so we thought we wouldn’t be able to declare the outer limits of this debate for quite some time. By “outer limits,” we simply mean the most extreme position imaginable for or against an emerging policy. We may have found the outer limits on cap-and trade, per Smart Politics : “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.” This is Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) (Smart Politics operates from the University of Minnesota). We’re genuinely surprised that anyone can gin up this level of rhetoric on cap-and-trade – m...

Margaret Kriz at National Journal's energy blog asked this question to several energy industry leaders : How Will New Leadership Impact Policy? Executives from the wind, petroleum, and gas industries, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and others weighed in including NEI's CEO Skip Bowman . Be sure to stop by.

With the predominance of knowledge industries, financial instruments, and labor-intensive services in our economy and news this political season, one might forget about the asset-intensive businesses that drive the heartland. We do not. Our membership is drawn from across the industrial spectrum and the fate of our largest members - utilities, manufacturers, suppliers and vendors, engineering and construction companies among them - depends on the interplay of capital markets; tax, trade and economic policy; and government regulation more than is the case for companies less laden with fixed assets. Thus it is heartening to hear the perspective of someone who understands the challenges of these heavily capitalized companies in today's turbulent times, a perspective that seldom reaches the front pages of The Washington Post or the New York Times or the teleprompters of CNN. This morning, the Wall Street Journal weekend edition published an interview with Fred Smith , CEO of FedEx an...