The EPA’s Reliability Cover-Up

The EPA’s Reliability Cover-Up
Why did the agency erase its own doubts about the U.S. electrical grid?
Wall Street Journal
Some 830,000 Connecticut customers are only now having their power restored after a snowstorm knocked out the state’s grid last month—but the Environmental Protection Agency continues to claim that its regulatory agenda won’t degrade U.S. electric reliability. The reality is that the EPA’s own staffers are—or used to be—worried, and their political superiors have erased the warnings.

In recent months, concerns have been growing that the agency’s torrent of new air-pollution rules will lead to blackouts or to the rolling outages that crisscrossed California and Arizona in September. Yet the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission…

Why solar panel prices are falling

Why solar panel prices are falling
by Tyler Cowen            MarginalRevolution

The cost of solar cells and microchips has nowhere to go but down because of a supply glut for the commodity they’re made from, a brittle charcoal-colored semiconductor baked in ovens at 600 degrees centigrade.

Polysilicon has plunged 93 percent to $33 a kilogram from $475 three years ago as the top five producers more than doubled output, data compiled by Bloomberg shows. The industry next year will produce 28 percent more of the raw material than will be consumed, up from 20 percent this…