Democrat States Continue Assault on PJM, File FERC Complaint
In what appears to be a coordinated effort, the PJM Interconnect electric grid is under attack by leftists. As we point out in our lead story today, the Pennsylvania DEP has prostituted itself politically and joined with extremist left-wing organizations to attack PJM. At the same time, three deeply blue (economically failed) states, New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois, filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) asking the agency to force PJM to rerun an electric capacity auction, claiming such a move would save ratepayers $5 billion. These states’ failed policies in FORCING unreliable solar and wind on the public caused the high-priced electricity problem in the first place. So now, the perpetrators are blaming the victim—PJM. Read More “Democrat States Continue Assault on PJM, File FERC Complaint”

Energy Transfer’s (ET) Lake Charles LNG project is in the news again. Last week we told you that ET had landed a new partner to help pay for the project, MidOcean Energy, which will cover 30% of the cost of building the plant (see 
The name Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) pretty much says it all. PGW is a natural gas utility serving the Philly region. It’s not an electric company; it’s a natural gas company. So, it will probably come as no surprise that PGW belongs to a trade organization called the American Public Gas Association (APGA). Indeed, PGW is the largest member of the APGA. And it would probably not surprise you to learn that the APGA supports President Trump’s efforts to pause and defund much of the money not already distributed from the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was Biden’s Green New Deal aimed at using billions of OUR taxpayer dollars to try to destroy fossil energy, including natural gas. The swampy left, including its apologists in the media (i.e., PBS), are trying to shame PGW into dropping its membership in the APGA, implying PGW is (via APGA) opposed to having its business destroyed using $700 million from the IRA earmarked for Philly. Imagine that!
EQT Corporation wants to build three miles of gathering pipeline to a well pad in Cascade Township, Lycoming County, PA. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) published a notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin inviting comments on a Chapter 105 Encroachment permit for a three-mile-long, 8-inch natural gas gathering pipeline being constructed on a 50-foot-wide right-of-way.
In March, MDN told you about a legislative proposal from newly elected West Virginia Governor Pat Morrisey, a measure called the Power Generation and Consumption Act (House Bill 2014) to expand data center development in the state (see
A month ago, MDN told you about a meeting held in northeastern Pennsylvania between newly-appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Congressman Rob Bresnahan, several state elected officials, as well as labor and others (see
Does Donald Trump ever sleep? He just keeps churning out the hits, day after day and week after week. Two days ago, President Trump signed two more executive orders (EOs) and a memorandum related to energy. On April 9, the President issued a new executive order requiring agencies to adopt one-year sunset dates on any existing regulations affecting energy. A second order requires agencies to identify regulations that limit competition. The President also signed a memorandum implementing a previous EO, directing the repeal of unlawful regulations under 10 recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including the Supreme Court decision overturning the “Chevron doctrine.”
Permitting in Pennsylvania, overseen by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been a hot mess for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, or even six months for approval — instead of the policy-mandated 14 days. According to a DEP press release from yesterday, that’s all behind us. Last November, DEP Acting Secretary Jessica Shirley and Gov. Josh Shapiro said the agency had *eliminated* the backlog for oil and gas permits (see
In 2022, we reported the sad (and angering) news that then-U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a liberal Democrat from West Virginia, had betrayed his WV constituents and the entire country by secretly cutting a deal to vote for Joe Biden’s New Green Deal bill repackaged under the false and misleading name of the Inflation Reduction Act (see
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) was scheduled to consider accepting a petition by radical green groups, including the Clean Air Council and Environmental Integrity Project, to “study” the issue of increasing setbacks for shale drilling so far it would ban ALL new Marcellus/Utica drilling in the Keystone State. Instead of voting to accept the petition, EQB commissioners voted 16 to 3 to table the petition for a future meeting. No doubt this matter will cycle around again, but we can all breathe a sigh of relief for now.
Yesterday, President Trump signed four more executive orders (EOs) dealing with energy issues. Three of the four EOs targeted reviving the declining coal industry, which Trump calls “beautiful, clean coal.” We’ll briefly cover the coal EOs below. However, it was the noncoal EO that caught our attention. Trump signed the Protecting American Energy from State Overreach EO, which removes unlawful and burdensome state-level impediments to domestic energy production. Trump tasked Attorney General Pam Bondi to challenge state laws that may be “unconstitutional, preempted by Federal law, or otherwise unenforceable” to go after states like New York, which is mentioned explicitly in the EO.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the country’s sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility company. In May 2023, TVA announced that it would convert the Kingston Fossil Plant (coal-fired plant) in East Tennessee to a natural gas-fired plant capable of generating 1,500 megawatts of electricity (see
Last year, radical environmental groups (including the Clean Air Council and Environmental Integrity Project) petitioned the state Environmental Quality Board (EQB), asking the board to amend 25 Pa. Code Chapter 78a by increasing “setbacks” for oil and gas well drilling to a minimum of 3,281 feet from any building or water wells (5,280 feet from hospitals and schools), and 750 feet from any river, creek, or mud puddle (i.e., surface waters). Such an increase in setbacks would stop ALL new shale drilling in the state, which is the goal of these radicals. In March of this year, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), controlled by Josh Shapiro, recommended to the EQB that it accept and seriously consider the proposed rulemaking (see
It has taken President Trump and his ‘energy dominance’ agenda less than 60 days to put the entire climate juggernaut – over 30 years in the making – at risk of collapse. So says an excellent article by one of our favorite (former) Forbes authors, Tilak Doshi. Trump’s energy team is “charging full steam ahead, firing off policy and regulatory initiatives at a pace designed to overwhelm the capacity of opponents to respond.” It is leaving climate zealots “scrambling to oppose the Trumpian counter-revolution.” This is what winning looks like—and we LOVE it!