The bankrupt business has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying so far this year., EMMA FOEHRINGER MERCHANTJUNE 05, 2018
In the month following its declaration of bankruptcy and its request for an emergency orderto support coal and nuclear plants, FirstEnergy Solutions spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying, documents show.
Lobbying filings show a bill of $230,000 for FirstEnergy Solutions with top lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld so far in 2018. In total, FirstEnergy spent about $750,000 on activities with the firm, billed under work on “energy regulation” as well as federal and state government affairs. FirstEnergy did not work with Akin Gump in 2017.
Akin Gump’s invoice for May 30 through April 30, which it filed as part of FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy proceeding, shows that the firm billed for time spent in communication with members of Congress and in calls with the Department of Energy and the White House regarding FirstEnergy’s Section 202(c) request.
The lawmakers Akin Gump contacted hail from coal states including Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Among those lobbying for FirstEnergy on behalf of the firm Sam Olswanger, a former staff member for Republican Representative Daniel Webster of Florida, who has roots in West Virginia.
The Energy and Policy Institute, a renewable energy advocacy organization, annotated the recent filing and argued it showed the “high-priced campaign” FirstEnergy has waged to secure emergency assistance for coal and nuclear. It’s a market intervention that many in the energy industry, particularly the clean energy space, vehemently oppose.
The White House, the Department of Energy and FirstEnergy did not respond to request for comment regarding the filing.
Between 2008 and 2017, FirstEnergy Corp. spent an annual average of about $2.05 million on lobbying. Its spending hasn’t dipped below $1.8 million since 2011.
This year, Akin Gump seems to have found an audience with the administration. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the administration is preparing to use Section 202 of the Federal Power Act and the Defense Production Act to “stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity” from coal and nuclear.
And Akin Gump isn’t the only one working on the coal and nuclear bailout. Jeff Miller, a former adviser to Rick Perry who maintains close ties to the Trump administration, has signed clients including FirstEnergy Solutions parent company FirstEnergy Corp. since moving to Washington and founding his lobbying firm Miller Strategies last year.
In a Q1 2018 filing, Miller noted that his firm was lobbying the Energy Department, the Executive Office of the President and the U.S. House of Representatives on “issues related to grid resilience” for FirstEnergy.
In addition to the $330,000 FirstEnergy paid Miller in 2017 and so far in 2018, according to filings, the firm has also received $60,000 each from the Nuclear Energy Institute and Southern Company. A $110,000 lobbying filing for Pacific Electric & Gas mentions issues such as “climate resilience” that Miller’s firm brought before the Department of Energy, Executive Office of the President, and the U.S. House of Representatives.
While it’s not unusual for a company to hire lobbyists to pursue its interests in the halls of influence, Miller’s previous ties to the Trump administration are worth noting. As the Associated Press has reported, Miller ran Perry’s presidential campaign just two years ago and helped him through his confirmation process as Energy Secretary.
He has also contributed to the campaign coffers of Greg Pence, Mike Pence’s brother, who just won a congressional primary in Indiana. The president of America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC (political action committee), also confirmed to the AP that Miller works with the group as a volunteer.
On Friday, after Bloomberg broke the news that the administration was planning to move forward with plans to prop up coal and nuclear, President Trump asked Perry to draw up recommendations to do so.
During a Tuesday conference in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Energy Information Administration, the Department of Energy spoke for the first time since the memo release. Comments from Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes indicate DOE is sticking to the administration’s script.
“The president rightly views grid resilience as a national security issue,” he said, adding that closing nuclear and coal plants means “we’re losing more than grid resiliency; we’re losing energy security.”
Trump Plan to Prop Up Coal, Nuclear Won’t Protect the Electric Grid The Trump administration says it needs to support struggling coal and nuclear plants to safeguard the grid. Experts say it’ll do the opposite. U.S. News, By Alan Neuhauser, Staff WriterJune 4, 2018 PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP and Republican political leaders spent close to eight years accusing the Obama administration of picking winners and losers in the energy sector, but Trump’s order to the Energy Department last week to prop up failing coal and nuclear power plants does exactly what he vilified – and proposes the opposite of what’s needed to best safeguard the nation’s vulnerable electric grid, experts say.
Citing national security and defense concerns caused by the “rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix,” Trump on Friday directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry “to prepare immediate steps to stop the loss of these resources.”
The administration referred to coal and nuclear plants as “fuel-secure,” because they can house their fuel supplies on site, rather than relying on pipelines like natural gas plants.
Much remains unclear about the proposal, including how it will be implemented and how many plants it will seek to prop up. However, it encountered swift opposition from a broad range of energy experts, industry executives and advocates from across the spectrum. It’s also expected to face legal challenges in federal court, particularly from natural gas and renewables companies, which compete with coal and nuclear plants for market share.
Notably, a dispersed electric grid – one that relies on a diverse array of wind and solar power, in addition to natural gas, hydropower and, perhaps one day, advanced nuclear – is widely seen as far more resilient to attack or accident than one that depends on large, centralized power resources such as coal or large-scale nuclear.
The Defense Department, for example, isexpected to spend as much as $1.4 billion by 2026 on developing decentralized electric systems known as micro-grids, and the Energy Department in 2015partnered with private firms to research and develop distributed energy systems to boost the resilience for the civilian grid.
“If you really want security, you get away from all that and you decentralize the grid,” says David Bookbinder, chief counsel at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning think tank in the nation’s capital.
In particular, he continues, “residential solar is the single most secure form of power we have in the United States: It’s secure both from a fuel supply side – no one’s blocking the sun – and a distribution side: it goes from roof into your house, so there’s no problem with the transmission. That is a secure energy supply.”
Trump last year introduced a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panels, which is expected to crimp the solar industry’s growth in the coming years.
The biggest threat to the nation’s electric grid, meanwhile, isn’t believed to be an attack or accident that would take down a power plant but instead a disruption of the distribution network: the transmission lines, transformers and substations that carry electrons from the nation’s power plants to its homes and businesses.
……….”Most of the outages occur on the distribution system, which has nothing to do with the power plants connected to the system,” says John Larsen, director in the energy and climate practice at Rhodium Group, a research firm. “That’s not to say the loss of power from a particular plant doesn’t cause a loss of power here and there. But the vast majority of power outages occur elsewhere in the system.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees electricity markets,reached a similar conclusion in January, after the Trump administration made what was then its first attempt to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear plants.
FERC Commissioner Richard Glick, a Trump appointee, wrote in an opinion concurring with the agency’s decision to reject the administration’s proposal that “if a threat to grid resilience exists, the threat lies mostly with the transmission and distribution systems, where virtually all significant disruptions occur.”
The administration’s latest attempt to prop up coal and nuclear plants is expected to face similar challenges. The White House, in a memo made public last week, cited Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, as well as the Defense Production Act, which authorizes the Energy Department to nationalize parts of the nation’s electric sector during wartime……….
On Monday, 4 June 2018, comments from the public on the draft Integrated Planning Framework Bill are due to the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) in the Presidency.
The call for comments makes the draft bill sound fairly benign, in that the DPME says the bill will provide for the functions of the department and establish an institutional framework for “a new predictable planning paradigm and discipline within and across all spheres of government”.
However, upon analysis, the bill could be the latest worrying development in the relentless bid to push the new-nuclear build programme forward.
On 17 May 2018, Loyiso Tyabashe, senior manager of nuclear new build at Eskom, said at African Utility Week that Eskom is continuing with front-end planning for a nuclear build programme. This despite Cyril Ramaphosa sending clear signals at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January that South Africa does not have money to pursue a major nuclear plant build.
Within this context, consider the following lines contained in the draft integrated planning framework bill, which says that the Minister in the Presidency must:
(c) annually in consultation with the Minister of Finance develop a budget prioritisation framework in order to guide the allocation of resources to organs of state in the national sphere of government;
(d) annually give input to the Minister of Finance in the preparation of the budget on—
the status of the economy and the possible macro-economic interventions;
its alignment with the National Development Plan; and
the proposed capital and development projects and programmes and related expenditure;
Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma is Minister in The Presidency responsible for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. This bill would give the minister the ability to develop a budget prioritisation framework that outlines which capital programmes to prioritise and to propose the related expenditure. Capital projects could include such contentious projects as the nuclear build, the Moloto Rail and the Mzimvubu dam.
In February 2018, which is after Cyril Ramaphosa signalled at the World Economic Forum that South Africa has no money for major nuclear expansion, the DPME launched a discussion paper on energy. The DPME’s website notes that enquiries related to this discussion paper could be directed to Tshediso Matona.
Tshediso Matona is the Secretary for National Planning at the DPME and is also the fired former Eskom boss to whom former President Jacob Zuma apologised about the way he was treated when he was fired.
The discussion paper reiterates that “the promulgated IRP 2010-2030 included 9.6 GW of nuclear power generation capacity, which has been confirmed as existing policy on numerous occasions. The Draft IRP 2016 that is in the public domain for consultation following a significant time-lapse since the promulgation of the IRP 2010-2030 in 2011 has a Base Case that requires nuclear power by 2037 (earliest) while a Carbon Budget scenario requires it by 2026.”
The discussion paper does acknowledge that the court case in which the Inter-Governmental Agreements (IGAs) with the United States of America, the Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation were legally challenged, determined the IGAs to be irrational, unlawful and unconstitutional. The court ruled that they should be set aside.
However, the paper then continues to say that the opportunity for small modular reactors to be included in the integrated energy planning framework should be considered. While it says that appropriate realistic costs should be considered, the paper outlines in the line immediately before that small modular reactors have typically been considered prohibitively expensive. With regards to the small modular reactors, the paper refers to revived research and previous research in preparation for the shelved Pebble Bed Modular Reactor which cost about R10-billion before it was shut down.
So, if a smaller nuclear build at an appropriate realistic cost could be possible, should taxpayers be worried? According to two recently released reports by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), there is cause for concern. The WWF reports look at the players’ potential strategies for pushing the nuclear new-build programme as well as the domestic procurement and public finance implications. WWF cautions that suggestions for smaller amounts of installed nuclear capacity appear to be an attempt to gain support for smaller amounts of nuclear energy and use these as a stepping stone towards building the full 9.6 GW.
How might the Integrated Planning Framework Bill play a role in the continued push for nuclear? If the bill is legislated it would give the Minister in the Presidency responsible for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation the ability to give input to the Minister of Finance on proposed capital and development projects and programmes and related expenditure. The financing would need to come from somewhere.
WWF notes that finance for electricity generating plants typically comes from “corporate finance, government equity, government guarantees, loans from development finance institutions, a long-term loan from an export credit agency, and extra cash generated from regulated tariffs”.
However, says the WWF, it is unlikely that corporate finance would be used; government-to-government loans or financing from state banks or development finance institutions of the vendor’s home country are more likely to be used, with sovereign wealth funds another possibility. In order to enable a loan, National Treasury may need to put up a loan guarantee. Given the alarming trend of State-owned Entities including Eskom needing bailouts, the possibility of the loan being called in would be a risk. The ratings downgrade that Eskom received would also mean that a loan, if it were granted to Eskom, would attract a higher interest rate than previously.
The draft Integrated Planning Framework bill is currently in white paper form. When it comes before Parliament, there is a strong rationale for civil society to study it closely and make submissions to ensure that it is not used as a tool to push corrupt capital projects through the system. DM
UK takes £5bn stake in Welsh nuclear power station in policy U-turn, Ministers reach initial agreement with Japanese firm Hitachi over new Wylfa plant, Guardian, Adam Vaughan, 3 June 18,
The UK will take a £5bn-plus stake in a new nuclear power station in Wales in a striking reversal of decades-long government policy ruling out direct investment in nuclear projects.
Ministers said they had reached an initial agreement with the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi to back the Wylfa plant but emphasised that no final decision had yet been made and negotiations were just beginning.
The business secretary, Greg Clark, announcing the Wylfa agreement in the Commons, said: “For this project the government will be considering direct investment alongside Hitachi and Japanese government agencies.”…..
Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green party, said: “Taking a stake in this nuclear monstrosity would see taxpayers locked into the project and paying out for a form of electricity generation that’s not fit for the future.”
Greenpeace attacked what it called a “bailout” of the project and accused Clark of being coy about what Hitachi had been offered.
Heller maintains fight to exclude Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as federal nuclear dump site, By
Ripon Advance News Service | June 5, 2018 U.S. Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) hailed a federal appeals court decision rejecting a Texas petition that sought to compel a licensing decision on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project in Nevada.
“A nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain has the potential to inflict immeasurable harm on the health and safety of Nevadans and our economy, and that’s why I’m pleased with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision today to grant Nevada’s motion to dismiss,” Sen. Heller said after the court issued the ruling on June 1.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court granted a motion filed by Nevada to dismiss the Texas lawsuit, which alleged that the federal government had ignored a 2012 deadline to complete the licensing process for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository site.
……… The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has spent an estimated $8 billion studying the site and constructing an exploratory tunnel beneath Yucca Mountain – which is pretty much all that exists there now, according to the office. DOE estimates costs could reach $97 billion to construct and operate a repository at the site. Moreover, because no railroad exists to transport waste to the site, one would have to be built through Nevada to the mountain site. The estimated price tag could top $3 billion, according to the EYCMI Office.
Thus far, no federal funds have been allocated for the DOE’s proposed Yucca Mountain site, where proponents think burying the waste combined from 131 different U.S. sites would be the safest bet, while opponents of the plan say the desert mountain’s underground site isn’t a viable option to host a nuclear waste repository because the area is prone to earthquakes and even volcanic activity, according to the ECYMI Office.
……… Sen. Heller, who has been fighting to exclude the Nevada site as the nation’s main location for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel, most recently led successful efforts to ensure that the U.S. Senate excluded the proposed $30 million provision to store defense nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2019, H.R. 5515…..https://riponadvance.com/stories/heller-maintains-fight-exclude-nevadas-yucca-mountain-federal-nuclear-dump-site/
Dave Toke’s Blog 4th June 2018 , For the sake of artificially massaging down the price paid for electricity
from the proposed Wylfa nuclear plant the Government is about to commit the
country to pay for billions of pounds of almost inevitable construction
cost overruns.
In doing so the Tories will be junking their opposition to
doing such a thing. In 2010 The Conservative Party election manifesto
stated that: ‘we agree with the nuclear industry that taxpayer and
consumer subsidies should not and will not be provided – in particular
there must be no public underwriting of construction cost overruns’
There was a very good reason for this manifesto commitment. None of the nuclear
power plant currently operating in the UK were constructed according to
their original cost estimates. They were built during the time when
electricity was nationalised, and so the costs were spread around all
consumers and there was limited transparency about the economics of
building nuclear plants.
The Tories decided that there should be no more
wastage of public money on nuclear plant which soaked the public purse.
They wanted competition in electricity generation. Nick Butler in the
Financial Times has made some perceptive comments on this peculiar deal. He
is one of the few who has done some serious thinking about how it can
possibly be the case that the Wylfa project will be sold on a ‘cheaper’
price than Hinkley C despite the fact that the projected cost of building
Wylfa is actually higher than Hinkley
Times 3rd June 2018 ,Ministers will this week reverse decades of opposition to investing taxpayer money in nuclear energy by agreeing to bankroll a £15bn-plus power station in Wales. The government will commit to taking a direct stake in the Wylfa plant on Anglesey, planned by the Japanese industrial giant Hitachi, after more than two years of negotiations.
It is understood the government will also provide the vast bulk of the £9bn debt. State equity will slash the cost of borrowing, but leave the taxpayer exposed if costs balloon or the project overruns. It has, though, helped ministers to
negotiate a strike price — a guaranteed payment for the plant’s electricity — of about £77.50 per megawatt hour. The government was determined to achieve a cheaper price than the £92.50 agreed with EDF, which is building the £20bn Hinkley Point power station in Somerset.
It is understood that this week’s heads of terms agreement with Hitachi will refer to “lessons learnt” from Hinkley. That deal was criticised by the National Audit Office for driving up the cost by piling too much risk on EDF. The deal this week has had to overcome opposition from the Treasury and will be a coup for the business secretary Greg Clark, who sees nuclear power as a key pillar of the government’s industrial strategy. Hitachi is believed to be considering increasing the number of reactors at Wylfa from two to four, with a strike price of less than £70, and to be planning a plant in Gloucestershire. Wylfa’s three shareholders — the UK and Japanese governments and Hitachi — will pump in about £6bn of equity on top of the £9bn debt provided largely by UK taxpayers. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/taxpayer-bankrolls-15bn-nuclear-plant-at-wylfa-in-wales-0p7dnxfhq
It wasn’t that long ago that Pennsylvania policymakers proclaimed that the market is best suited to determine which energy technologies should move Pennsylvania forward.
Remember when nuclear power generators embraced the marketplace and were betrothed to electric deregulation after they received a $9 billion engagement ring?
Now two nuclear corporations, Exelon and FirstEnergy, are suing ratepayers for a divorce.
Hold on to your wallets.
Turns out that a handful of politicians and their donors know what’s best for Pennsylvania ratepayers. Alimony is going to be in the billions.
Welcome to this century’s version of corporate socialism. In September 1974, Three Mile Island Unit 1 became operational.
But it was behind schedule and over budget. Four years later, in December 1978, Three Mile Island Unit 2 came online: three times over budget and five years behind schedule.
No private equity was invested in the construction of TMI. Only cost overruns and delays. TMI was built and paid for by ratepayers. Sticker shock: $1.1 billion.
Then came the bailouts. Bailout No. 1: After 90 days of operation, TMI-2 melted down. Ratepayers once again came to the rescue. Under Gov. Dick Thornburgh’s plan, TMI-2 received $987 million to defuel the melted core from 1981 to 1993.
How did TMI show gratitude? Not only does TMI-2 pay no taxes, but the school district and the county had to return about $1 million in 2005 after the company appealed the tax assessment.
Great partner to the community!
In 1996, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed the Electricity Generation Customer Choice and Competition Act. The law restructured the electricity utility industry, separating the generation of electricity from its distribution and transmission.
Pennsylvanians were free to choose the source of their electricity from any qualifying provider, but ownership and operation of the utility wires remained with regulated monopolies.
Once those customers were free to choose a more affordable source of electricity, the utilities’ expensive nuclear power could not compete in the new retail generation market.
There was one huge problem — utilities were saddled with nuclear power plants that were burdened with enormous debt because of cost overruns. That debt was secured by the wallets of the utilities’ previously captive customers.
Bailout No. 2: TMI-1 was part of the $9 billion deregulation bailout that took consumers a decade to pay off from 1999 to 2009. Keep in mind, these payments were meant to help nuclear power generators transition to competitive markets.
Now they are back for more!
It turns out that TMI is the most uneconomical reactor in the state.
It lost $300 million to $800 million over the last five years despite the deregulation bailout.
If consumers already paid to build the nuclear plants, and then paid off the debt on the nuclear plants, why does TMI need yet another bailout?
What happened to all the money collected from consumers under the Competitive Transition Charge over 10 years?
Bailout No. 3?
If the bailout in New Jersey cost $300 million a year, how much is the bailout going to cost Pennsylvania, which has three times the amount of nuclear capacity? This includes three nuclear facilities with six reactors that continue to clear auction and remain profitable.
Rather than asking for another bailout, TMI should commit to finally cleaning up TMI-2 — a de facto high-level radioactive waste site in the middle of the Susquehanna River — and deploy its 525 employees to decontaminate and decommission TMI-1.
NRDC 1st June 2018 The Trump Administration has made no secret of its desire to prop up coal
and nuclear plants for political purposes and today the White House made it abundantly clear. At the same time, a leaked draft memo unveiled last night repackages a previously rejected idea to bail out coal and nuclear plants, this time arguing that they are needed to protect national security.
The memo proposes that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issue an order requiring electricity grid operators to purchase, for two years, electricity from expensive and uncompetitive coal and nuclear facilities that would otherwise retire. Neither the White House nor DOE have owned up to the memo or its contents.
But White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated today that stopping coal and nuclear retirements remains a priority for President Trump, and that he has directed DOE Secretary Rick Perry “to prepare immediate steps to stop the loss of these resources, and looks forward to his recommendations.” https://www.nrdc.org/experts/john-moore/coal-and-nuclear-bailout-memo-recycled-idea-new-hat
Ministers will this week reverse decades of opposition to investing taxpayer money in nuclear energy by agreeing to bankroll a £15bn-plus power station in Wales.
The government will commit to taking a direct stake in the Wylfa plant on Anglesey, planned by the Japanese industrial giant Hitachi, after more than two years of negotiations.
It is understood the government will also provide the vast bulk of the £9bn debt. State equity will slash the cost of borrowing, but leave the taxpayer exposed if costs balloon or the project overruns.
“Unfortunately, impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix, and impacting the resilience of our power grid,” the White House said in a statement.
The Trump administration has been preparing to invoke emergency powers granted under Cold War-era legislation to order regional grid operators to buy electricity from ailing coal and nuclear power plants. There have been meetings this week at the Cabinet deputies’ level and at the National Security Council.
According to the draft memo, the Energy Department would exercise its emergency authority to order grid operators to give preference to plants “that have a secure on-site fuel supply” and that “are essential to support the Nation’s defense facilities, critical energy infrastructure, and other critical infrastructure.” Only coal and nuclear plants regularly keep fuel on site.
The Energy Department would also establish a “Strategic Electric Generation Reserve.” The memo added that “federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity.” The emergency rules would be a “prudent stopgap measure” that would last two years while the Energy Department did further study.
“President Trump believes in total energy independence and dominance, and that keeping America’s energy grid and infrastructure strong and secure protects our national security, public safety and economy from intentional attacks and natural disasters,” the White House said.
The idea of declaring an emergency under the Defense Production Act of 1950 (used by President Harry S. Truman for the steel industry) and Section 202 of the Federal Power Act has been promoted by the chief executives of the coal-mining firm Murray Energy and the Ohio utility FirstEnergy, both of whom have contributed heavily to Trump’s political activities.
Robert Murray presented a proposal to Energy Secretary Rick Perry in March 2017, the month Perry took office. And on April 2 of this year, FirstEnergy appealed for emergency help after a subsidiary operating ailing power plants filed for bankruptcy protection.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency, unanimously rejected an earlier proposal by the Energy Department that would have favored coal and nuclear plants.
In a recent appearance at a Washington Post Live event, FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre said that using the emergency powers was “perhaps not the most obvious fit.”
He said using that section of the Federal Power Act “tees off the concept of continuance of a war in which the United States is involved as being kind of the baseline circumstance that would justify a DOE order to certain types of facilities to either begin operating or continue operation.”
Environmental groups, natural-gas producers, and Republicans and Democrats who have pushed for greater competition in electricity markets all condemned the latest signal that the administration might be moving closer to imposing the Energy Department’s plan.
They noted that the coal and nuclear power plants that would benefit have failed to compete against natural gas, solar and wind. Many of the plants have operated far longer than anticipated when they were built.
“Uneconomic, dirty coal plants retiring does not represent a national security risk,” Michael Panfil, director of federal energy policy and senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote on his blog. “If Trump chooses to bail out these failing coal plants, he’ll be forcing Americans to pay for dirty energy that pollutes our environment and makes people sick.”
Katie Bays of Height Capital Markets, an investment research firm, wrote in a commentary: “If DOE proceeds as the memo suggests, a selection of coal and nuclear plants, ostensibly those at risk of retirement, would receive subsidized payments . . . under a stitched-together ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ of federal authorities. Above all, the subsidy would be a major victory for FirstEnergy as it negotiates with bondholders over the value of coal and nuclear plants owned by its bankrupt FirstEnergy Solutions subsidiary.”
FirstEnergy’s top lobbyist last year was Jeff Miller, who was campaign manager for the presidential campaign of Perry, now energy secretary. Trump attended a private dinner with Miller and a handful of political advisers in early April.
Trump wants to manipulate regulation to force a taxpayer bailout of pollution-based energy companies. Coal baron Robert Murray recently donated to Trump’s reelection efforts and is already seeing his investment pay off.
The Trump administration is preparing a massive bailout of the pollution-causing industry, specifically those who donated millions to support his campaign.
Bloomberg reports that Trump officials are planning to push grid operators to buy electricity from coal and nuclear plants that are out of sync with the move toward cleaner, more reliable energy. The outlet notes that the move would be an “unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.”
A leaked memo Department of Energy, now under the control of secretary Rick Perry (former governor of Texas), shows plans to invoke emergency authority to give an excuse for the scheme.
The memo claims “Federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity.”
Sara Chieffo, vice president of Government Affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, slammed the proposal in a statement to Shareblue Media.
“The Trump administration is once again bending over backwards to prop up dying, dirty energy sources instead of building the clean energy economy our communities need and deserve,” Chieffo said.
If the bailout advances, some of the biggest beneficiaries would be polluters who invested massively to install Trump in the White House.
These figures include coal baron Robert Murray. Murray is the head of Murray Energy Corporation, one of the largest independent operators of coal mines in the country. His company has a horriblesafety record and multiple injuries to miners as a result.
He, like Trump, calls climate change “a total hoax.”
Murray recently donated $1 million to America First Action, the administration’s designated pro-Trump super PAC pushing for his reelection.
Before that Murray spent over $300,000 backing Trump in 2016 and donated $300,000 to Trump’s poorly attended inauguration.
Murray has been involved in direct meetings with Perry designed to implement changes in an “action plan” he presented to the administration. The plan was a list of changes to policy and regulations that would benefit the coal industry directly.
Trump has often been a booster of coal polluters. During the campaign he echoed fellow Republicans and their fraudulent claims that President Barack Obama was waging a “war on coal.” Trump recently said he had ended the “war on beautiful clean coal” with moves to ease environmental legislation.
Clean energy has been on the rise in America, and as Lara Ettenson, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council recently wrote, clean energy “is the driving force behind job growth” in the energy industry.
Pollutant-based power sources like coal are the past, and the only way the operators in the industry like Murray can continue to be propped up is through a bailout like the one Trump is planning.
Trump wants taxpayer money to be used to keep his top patrons in business, while continuing to churn out toxic gases into the environment. He’s engineering a bailout of his cronies, and money for his re-election is likely to come rolling in if he has his way.
Montel 31st May 2018 French utility EDF will reveal “in the next few days” whether
sub-standard welding identified at France’s first European pressurised
reactor (EPR) in Flamanville will lead to further start-up delays, a
spokeswoman said on Thursday. However, she refused to comment on Montel’s
interview with a senior official of the ASN watchdog’s technical arm –
the IRSN – who said the commissioning of the unit faced further delays
“of at leastseveral months”. https://www.montel.no/en/story/edf-to-reveal-possible-epr-start-up-delay-in-days/905717
Jeremy Leggett 31st May 2018 French nuclear regulator fears “epidemic” safety-culture collapse at
Flamanville: disaster looms for EDF. Almost 150 more weld failures (beyond
those discovered earlier, as reviewed in the article) mean the nuclear
plant scheduled online in 2012 at a cost of €3.5bn is now delayed to
2020, probably, at a cost of €10.5bn, and counting.
Thierry Charles, deputy director general, Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear
Safety (IRSN), the technical arm of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN):
“The expected high level of quality was not specified (Editor’s note:
by EDF), the conformity of supplies to the specification could not be
attested”, plus “the qualification of the welding procedures […] ]
does not respect all the rules of art. Charles cites concerns over “other
categories of mechanical equipment” than the pipes of the secondary
circuit. He flags “human and organizational failures” and “lack of
rigor of suppliers”.
He ascribes all this to the “inadequacies of the
monitoring system put in place by EDF” to check the conformity of the
work of its subcontractors and he fears “dysfunction potentially damaging
to safety”. He has invited the ASN to summon EDF to thoroughly review its
organization “to improve the quality of realization of welds and make its
monitoring system more effective”. In a final, potentially lethal, blow
to EDF he argues that “additional controls will be requested on other
circuits of the reactor to verify that there is no epidemic.” https://jeremyleggett.net/2018/05/31/french-nuclear-regulator-fears-safety-culture-collapse-at-flamanville-disaster-looms-for-edf/
Liberation 31st May 2018 [Machine Translation] The Flamanville EPR is likely to see its start
postponed to 2020. The weld quality problem detected on the EPR reactor
could differ by almost a year from its commissioning. The nuclear policeman
should demand that the work be redone.
A blow for EDF. A month and a half
after the discovery of new quality defects on 150 welds of the main
secondary circuit of the EPR reactor of the Flamanville power station, in
the Channel , EDF is preparing to post a further delay of several months in
the commissioning of what was to be the new flagship of the atom made in
France.
The EPR was due to start no later than early 2019. But according to
a source very familiar with the file questioned by Libération, the start
of the EPR Flamanville could outright “suffer a year late and be postponed
to the end of 2019 or early 2020” ! Severely taxed by the gendarme of the
atom, EDF would indeed be forced to resume one by one “Almost all 150
welds” whose quality is not up to what was expected by the nuclear
policeman for this type of equipment under nuclear pressure. http://www.liberation.fr/france/2018/05/31/l-epr-de-flamanville-risque-de-voir-son-demarrage-reporte-a-2020_1655448
FPL, speakers clash on plan to run Turkey Point nuclear plant to 2053, Palm Beach Post ByCharles Elmore– Palm Beach Post Staff Writer 1 June 18
Opinions are splitting faster than atoms when it comes to Florida’s oldest nuclear power plant, Turkey Point.
To hear officials working for Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light tell it, the plant hums along as a money-saving, greenhouse gas-trimming success story that deserves federal regulatory blessing to have its oldest reactor turn 80 years old on the job in 2052. A second reactor would reach the milestone a year later. That would rank among the longest tenures in the nation and double the average of less than 40 years.
But the request for a 20-year extension represents something else entirely to scores of environmentalists, activists, students and others who traveled from places such as West Palm Beach and Boca Raton for a chance to speak at a public meeting near the plant south of Miami.
They see a plant with an outdated canal cooling system threatening fragile ecosystems and water supplies, and a candidate to become the unwanted sequel to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster. They say Turkey Point is in no shape to get an octogenarian’s operating license without big changes to protect South Florida’s environment and guard against threats such as rising seas and stronger hurricanes.
In public hearings, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials are weighing those and other points of view.
Public comments can be filed by June 21. An agency decision is expected by October 2019.
“I have a stake in the outcome of this process,” said Laura Stinson, 20, a senior at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, who is pursuing a degree in marine biology. She said it is “imperative these canals be closed” in favor of another solution such as cooling towers, which she and others argue present lower risk for introducing heated water, high salt concentrations, and other disruptions into surface and ground water systems.
Laura Reynolds, a consultant in West Palm Beach for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said FPL must be held to account for a “massive pollution plume” that “has built up under the plant for 45 years.”
……Turkey Point’s two nuclear units began commercial operation in 1972 and 1973, and would operate to 2052 and 2053 under the proposal.
Comment on Turkey Point
Got comments on the plan for the Turkey Point nuclear plant to continue to operate for 80 years? Tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 21. Include Docket ID NRC-2018-0101 with your comment, via the regulations.govwebsite.
Now That Xcel Won’t Get Its Nuclear Bill, What’s Next? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists JESSICA COLLINGSWORTH, POLICY ANALYST, CLEAN ENERGY | JUNE 1, 2018 Earlier this month the Xcel Nuclear Plant Costs Bill (SF3504/HF3708) passed the Senate but failed to pass through the Minnesota House. The bill created a system of approving nuclear plant repair costs for Xcel Energy that would have circumvented the normal process of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MN PUC) and left ratepayers to shoulder potentially excessive costs of keeping Xcel’s nuclear plants running.
……So now that the Xcel nuclear bill didn’t pass, what’s next, and what does this all mean for Minnesota’s clean energy future? Trying to keep Xcel’s nuclear fleet in the blackXcel’s nuclear fleet is struggling to stay profitable in the face of cheaper alternatives (like renewable energy and natural gas) and looming upkeep costs. Xcel estimates it will need at least $1.4 billion dollars in repairs over the next 17 years for its Monticello and Prairie Island nuclear plants. To provide certainty that Xcel would be able to recover those costs from ratepayers, they introduced legislation that would have allowed the company to get upfront approval from the PUC for its future nuclear expenses instead of approval after those investments have been made (how it works currently). The legislation would have provided certainty for Xcel that they would be able to recover these maintenance costs from ratepayers.
This is a bad deal for ratepayers because the legislation dilutes the PUC’s authority, and attempts to bypass the PUC’s current process for reviewing costs to determine if they’re prudent. That’s why UCS opposed the bill: it was an attempt to avoid the existing regulatory review process and shift financial risk from Xcel’s shareholders to ratepayers. This is not the first legislative attempt to dilute the power of the MN PUC.
Maintaining the current process for approving costs is important
Xcel is due to file their next Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), also known as their 15-year business plan, in February 2019. The IRP process allows for a comparison of electricity options to make sure consumers are getting the most bang for their ratepayer bucks. The IRP process is where Xcel will detail how they plan to generate and supply power to their customers over the next 15 years, including any expected expenses to keep its nuclear plants up and running.
A successful IRP includes evaluation of existing resources, a robust economic analysis of different supply-side and demand-side options under a range of scenarios and assumptions, including future environmental costs and fuel prices, opportunities for stakeholder engagement, adequate reporting requirements, and a robust set of criteria of which to base approval or denial of utility plans to spend ratepayer dollars.
It’s important to keep the current process because it protects ratepayers from excessive charges. By separating out the nuclear plant upkeep costs, we’re not comparing them to other options that would maintain a reliable and affordable energy supply for less cost to ratepayers. The legislation would have pre-approved these costs, meaning any cost overruns due to mismanagement by Xcel would have been automatically passed on to ratepayers. To protect Minnesota consumers, it’s important to keep the robust IRP process and maintain the PUC’s authority to scrutinize Xcel’s expenditures……..https://blog.ucsusa.org/jessica-collingsworth/xcel-nuclear-bill-whats-next
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