pennsylvania

energy efficiency leap forward?

Last week, Pennsylvania sold nearly 4,700 loans for a projected total of $31.3 million in a transaction that advances nationwide efforts to develop a secondary market for energy efficiency lending products.[read more]

The Dennis Farm is located in Susquehanna County, which “is sitting on the sweet spot in the Marcellus,” according to George Stark, director of external affairs for Cabot Oil and Gas Corp.[read more]

Natural gas extraction in Bradford and Washington Counties, Pennsylvania

Wellpads, roads, pipelines and waste pits are clearcuts in forests. Cumulatively they are very destructive to the natural ecosystem.[read more]

 The media and airwaves have been full of discussion over the Pennsylvania SREC market, as the state legislature considers amending the current RPS law that created the market a few years ago. Perhaps no single group has a stronger interest in the outcome of this proposed legislation and the overall health of the SREC market than...[read more]

Pennsylvania has one year of experience with deregulation of its electricity markets.  Residential, commercial, and industrial customers can now switch to alternative electricity suppliers in a quest to manage the generation and transmission costs on their electricity bills.  With some suppliers, they can even get energy from...[read more]

New quantification of the national impact of the shale natural gas revolution going on in the United States, from IHS Global Insight, one of the world's largest economic analysis and forecasting firms:Jobs - In 2010 the shale natural gas industry supported 600,000 jobs. The IHS Global Insight report projects growth to nearly 870,000 jobs...[read more]

I see that ConocoPhillips has announced it will idle its 185,000 barrel-per-day Philadelphia area refinery, as a prelude to selling it or closing it permanently. Combined with the recent announcement that Sunoco would exit the refining business and sell or close its two refineries in Philadelphia, this amounts to just under half of the...[read more]

Michelle Bachmann is promising cheap gas and millions of energy jobs. The hyperbole is absurd and sheds light on similar claims coming from the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) and PA politicians in the back pocket of industry. The latest from Bachmann:“What Barack Obama has done is lock up America’s energy reserves,” she said. “We’re...[read more]

The pace of solar installations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania is ironically destroying the incentives that make such installations possible.Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs), existing in states that have Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), represent the environmental attributes from a solar facility, and are produced each time a...[read more]

The study referred to in the above headline, “Study finds no groundwater issues from gas well fracking,” is the same PNAS study I mentioned last week under the headline, “Study finds methane in Pennsylvania, NY groundwater associated with gas well fracking.” I’m not now suggesting that methane in groundwater isn’t a problem, rather...[read more]

Also in the Spring 2011 issue of Regulation magazine is Andrew Kleit’s article on a proposed Pennsylvania Power Authority. In the course of explaining why such a state power agency would be a bad idea, Kleit explains a lot about how the wholesale power market works in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere). Noteworthy is Kleit’s response to a...[read more]

On November 30, 2010, The Ecologist published the above video in association with a story titled US natural gas drilling boom linked to pollution and social strife. Please take the time to watch it and think about the implications of a vastly expanded effort to frack our way into the future. This often touted "bridge" to a renewable...[read more]

The big obstacle to passing a new, comprehensive transportation bill is the lack of agreement over a source of financing. The traditional source of funding for federal transportation programs is the gas tax, which, as we all know, hasn’t been increased since 1993, which means its real value has fallen considerably. And, it seems to be...[read more]

Via Keystone Progress, Pennsylvania legislator Daryl Metcalfe (R - Cranberry Twp) responded to in invitation to an energy independence bus tour with a letter of his own, stating that any veterans "promoting the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change" would be traitors to "the oath they took to defend the Constitution...[read more]

From the Central Penn Business Journal, two views on electric utility industry restructuring in Pennsylvania: First from Matt Brouillette: Pennsylvania’s electricity rate caps have kept prices artificially low, preventing competitors from entering the marketplace and consumers from having choices. Now, when rate caps expire in 2010 in...[read more]