John Locke Updates: Economics & Environment

Nuclear energy is a clean (zero-emissions), cheap, and abundant energy source. But Gov. Cooper's "Clean Energy Plan" requires a straightforward, categorical rejection of nuclear power.

The ideology and known preferences of the ones providing technical support to Gov. Cooper's "Clean Energy Plan" sadly means we can expect higher energy prices, the loss of productive power plants, and California-style rolling blackouts.

A message from our CEO Amy Cooke: Thomas Jefferson said, “Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” All of us at the John Locke…

As we struggle through the COVID-19 pandemic, our government has responded by imposing economically severe restrictions on our lives. In doing so, elected officials must remember that imposing costly public…

What can possibly unite these two items? Not only do they seem unrelated, but they also seem opposite. The first is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It’s a graph…

This week Bloomberg Energy issued an attention-grabbing report on a serious waste problem with wind turbines: retired turbine blades are clogging up landfills. This problem is only going…

Several questions surround the coal-ash cleanup settlement agreement between Gov. Roy Cooper’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), several “Community Groups,” Duke Energy, and not electricity consumers. The agreement…

Prior to April 2019, Duke Energy had agreed with the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to close and excavate all but nine of its 31 coal-ash basins. DEQ had…

It’s a feature in reporting about solar energy to discuss how dramatically its costs have declined. That tends to be misleading because solar is a completely unreliable resource on its…

A pending major federal rule change could create a positive change for people’s electricity bills. That could be good news, especially for North Carolinians. This fall, the Federal Energy Regulatory…