Cleantech News: Trump May Not Get His Wall, But He May Make Dams Great Again

In late August, the U.S. Department of Energy released its much-anticipated Electricity Markets and Reliability report. Back in May, I wrote in Forbesabout the Trump administration mandating the report, and I warned coal and nuclear investors not to assume it would save their bacon. It sure didn't.

Investors who bet that the report would argue for a U.S. energy policy more favorable for coal and nuclear — perhaps declaring a national emergency and putting coal on the endangered species list — guessed wrong. The report instead blames coal’s decline not on Obama-era regulations, but rather on the shale gas revolution. It preaches a market-based approach where the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers through subsidies and bailouts.

I’ve always believed in and spoken out for the value of having a very diverse energy-generation portfolio, encompassing coal, nuclear, natural gas, wind, solar and more, like my home state of Pennsylvania — truly a U.S. energy capital that has an “all of the above” energy strategy. While every sector of the energy economy scrambled to spin the DOE’s latest report for its particular special interest, I found the report’s real eye-opener to be its boost to dams: It argues that Washington should cut regulations to make it easier to license and relicense hydroelectric power projects.

Dams. Remember those? Anyone who has visited the Hoover Dam and had their breath taken away by what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “this great feat of mankind” will forever marvel at the engineering miracle of dams. Dams have generated electricity and produced zero carbon dioxide for more than a century.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2w9vbxB

Source: Forbes

 

 

 

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