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Clark Williams-Derry, Tom Sanzillo and Kathy Hipple
As earnings season begins, a worrisome trend persists
The U.S. fracking sector continued to spill alarming volumes of red ink in the first half of 2018. We detail the trend in a research brief published jointly today by IEEFA and Sightline Institute that describes how fracking companies continue to struggle. Even after two and a half years of rising oil prices and growing expectations […]
Kathy Hipple
Financial peril across an industry’s entire supply chain is intensifying
Even as risks mount for coal worldwide, nearly 1,400 new coal plants or units are planned or under development in 59 countries. If built, these plants would increase coal power capacity by 33%, adding more than 670,000 megawatts to the global coal plant fleet. Who exactly is developing these new coal plants? German environmental NGO […]
Tom Sanzillo and Kathy Hipple
Math doesn’t add up on Teck’s Frontier initiative
Teck’s $20.6 billion Frontier Oil Sands Mine Project, now before the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency Joint Review Panel, faces an extraordinary and alarming combination of risks. The project will face financial distress for its entire 41-year life cycle, according to the report by our organization, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA.org), neither […]
Vibhuti Garg
Evidence of the effects of progressive governance policies
India is moving rapidly ahead with its clean energy transition, setting an aggressive target of having 175 gigawatts of installed renewable energy in the country by 2022. Of this, the government anticipates 100GW will be solar given the resource’s huge potential in India. As of 31 July of this year, India has 23GW of installed […]
Tom Sanzillo and Cathy Kunkel
Magical debt thinking persists even with Puerto Rico’s economy declining and PREPA losing money
July’s proposal to pay bondholders 77 cents on the dollar for about a third of the debt of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) straggles on, neither approved nor rejected despite deadlines passing. If the measure of success of a debt settlement is that it offers realistic payouts to bondholders while allowing the debtor […]
Seth Feaster
Overlapping forces spell further declines for coal-fired power
We’ve published a research brief today that looks at the underlying forces driving a global shift in how electricity is generated. Our paper—“The Seven Technology Disruptions Driving the Global Energy Transition”—is a primer on fundamental changes occurring now that are collectively displacing coal from its long-dominant role in power generation. We note in the brief […]
Tom Sanzillo
Millions of dollars squandered on rejected restructuring plans, and a $1.1 billion loss on risky interest rate bets
Overreliance on outside consultants with conflicts of interest and the failure to invest in a competent workforce have imposed huge costs on and severely weakened the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and other Puerto Rico government agencies. That’s one of many important lessons from the investigation of Puerto Rico’s debt crisis recently published by […]
Gerard Wynn
Capacity markets have proven to be an impediment to modernization
Overlapping forces spell further declines for coal-fired power LONDON — Britain introduced a capacity market in 2014 to safeguard security of supply as the country transitioned to more variable, low-carbon electricity sources like wind and solar power, but it looks increasingly like a backward step that rewards ageing, large-scale incumbents while penalising newer, smaller competitors. […]
Press Release
Placing sustainability and self-sufficiency ahead of dependency on imported fossil fuels
Oct. 1, 2018 (IEEFA) — The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis published a report today in concert with a coalition of Puerto Rican public policy organizations, labor organizations and energy experts detailing the island’s largely untapped possibilities in solar-powered electricity generation. The report “Queremos Sol” (“We Want Sun”)—outlines a power-system transformation that would place sustainability and […]
David Schlissel
Who will pay for cleanup and reclamation at sites in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia?
The overriding risk that remains from a federal court settlement this week around the FirstEnergy Solutions bankruptcy in Ohio is that taxpayers in three states will be left holding the bag on cleaning up after the company. This is no small-ticket item. It’s impossible to say what it will cost to decommission and do the […]
IEEFA U.S.: More red flags on fracking-focused companies
As earnings season begins, a worrisome trend persists
The U.S. fracking sector continued to spill alarming volumes of red ink in the first half of 2018. We detail the trend in a research brief published jointly today by IEEFA and Sightline Institute that describes how fracking companies continue to struggle. Even after two and a half years of rising oil prices and growing expectations […]