Coal-fired power plants have long been portrayed as outdated, expensive burdens on the American grid — relics that must be retired to make way for “cheaper” renewables. But the data tells a very different story. Energy Bad Boys (analysts Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr) have delivered the receipts with a rigorous analysis of real-world operating […]
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In a decisive step to safeguard Florida’s electric grid amid rising electricity demand, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a 90-day emergency order on June 4, 2026, directing the Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) to keep its 465-MW coal-fired Stanton Unit 1 at the Stanton Energy Center running instead of moving it into cold shutdown. […]
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President Donald Trump is set to announce a $700 million federal funding initiative to bolster U.S. coal-fired power generation and establish a dedicated American coal export terminal, according to a Bloomberg report published June 3, 2026. The funding will be channeled through the 1950 Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era tool repurposed for domestic energy […]
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Wasif Latif, Co-Founder, President & Chief Investment Officer, Sarmaya Partners, stopped by the Energy News Beat Podcast again. This time, we covered current events in the Strait of Hormuz and the impact of the war in Iran. It does not look like they will be going away quietly into the night, and they will want […]
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China’s power sector delivered a clear reminder in April 2026 that even the world’s fastest-growing renewable energy giant still leans heavily on coal when the wind doesn’t blow or nuclear plants go offline for maintenance. According to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, thermal power generation (overwhelmingly coal, with a smaller share of natural […]
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As the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran disrupts key Middle East energy routes and chokes global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, Asia’s top LNG importers are turning back to coal to keep the lights on. Spot LNG prices have roughly doubled, while Asian LNG imports have fallen sharply—the biggest drop since 2022—prompting utilities across the region […]
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PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest regional transmission organization, is confronting a historic shift from electricity surplus to structural scarcity. A new special report released by PJM on May 6, 2026, titled Powering Reliability Through Market Design, details how unprecedented demand growth—fueled largely by hyperscale data centers and AI infrastructure—combined with accelerated retirements of dispatchable generation […]
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on May 4, 2026, and vowed to deepen energy cooperation with Azerbaijan as part of Italy’s broader strategy to secure supplies amid ongoing global disruptions. Meloni described Azerbaijani gas and oil — which currently account for 16% of Italy’s gas imports and 17% […]
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The AI boom is rewriting the rules of U.S. electricity demand, and the numbers don’t lie. BloombergNEF’s latest analysis, highlighted in a widely shared post by energy analyst David Blackmon (@EnergyAbsurdity), projects that data centers will drive massive incremental power needs through 2035. The stacked bar chart from BNEF is crystal clear: combined-cycle gas turbines […]
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The standard Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) has dominated energy policy discussions for years. Policymakers, media, and even some industry reports cite it to claim that wind and solar are now the “cheapest” forms of new electricity generation. But as Germany’s Energiewende and certain U.S. states demonstrate, this metric is dangerously incomplete. It ignores the […]
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