Browsing: Energy

What do Wisconsinites want in 2025? Just the chance to buy a modest house and heat it affordably. A safe place away from gunshots and a job that pays the bills. And a really good school where kids feel safe and hopeful.

Small nuclear modular reactors are a big deal for Wisconsin, given our developing AI economy and Gov. Evers’ Clean Energy Plan.

The Biden administration’s climate adviser told a “sustainability conference” this week that the president wants to reactivate decommissioned nuclear power plants.

Wisconsin is nearing the end of what Gov. Tony Evers proclaimed “Clean Energy Week,” and the Badger Institute offers ample reading on the subject.

A federal report this month is touting two Wisconsin nuclear power plant sites — one operating, one shut down — as attractive locations for installing new nuclear electric generating plants.

America’s energy grids are strained, and Michigan is reconsidering nuclear’s role in meeting consumer demand. Wisconsin, too, should take note.

A planned solar farm in central Wisconsin may claim the greater prairie-chicken as an unintended casualty.

Wisconsin’s one nuclear power plant consistently puts out more than 90% of the maximum amount of power it’s rated for. The capacity factor for combined cycle natural gas plants was 63.2%, and for coal, 47.6%

While heat pumps can be cheaper than gas-powered furnaces, they add an average of more than $2,000 a year to a new Wisconsin home’s heating bill, according to a Badger Institute study.

Data centers chug electricity like undergrads drink beer, and the advent of artificial intelligence — which uses, we’re told, about 10 times the electricity as conventional searches — makes power demand soar.

Wisconsin is handing out almost $79 million in federal funds to private businesses to build charging stations for electric vehicles at a make-or-break moment for both the EV and charging station industries.

Show your progressive friends the facts and ask this: If you’re not willing to pay to fight climate change, who do you think should?

The average monthly electric bill for Wisconsinites has more than doubled over the past two decades.

“Wisconsin presents far different trade-offs when it comes to the adoption of all-electric heat, given its climate and the economic particulars,” said Hanson. “We found the cost disadvantage strikingly large, and it was remarkable how robust the difference was. We hope this helps policymakers.”

What if Wisconsinites were told they couldn’t heat their houses by burning fossil fuels in a furnace, the way about 4 out of 5 Wisconsin homes do now? What would that cost us?

Wisconsin primarily generates its electricity from coal and natural gas. The next three biggest sources (nuclear fuels, hydroelectric dams and wind) make up a small percentage of Wisconsin’s electricity generation.

The Badger Institute believes that energy solutions must include a pragmatic balancing of costs and benefits to the economy both now and long-term. The transition must be dictated by science and economics and include free-market principles.

Energy Featured Analysis The cost of outlawing fossil fuel heat in Wisconsin Badger Institute statement of guiding principles on energy…

Gov. Tony Evers, who has set as a goal that “all electricity consumed in the state be 100% carbon-free by 2050,” is making sure that state agencies and local governments are able to ban the use of fossil fuels to run cars and lawnmowers, heat homes and power stoves.

Policymakers and environmental activists opposed to the use of fossil fuels like natural gas have pushed state and local governments to ban their use in homes and businesses without consideration of increased cost to consumers, the nature and reliability of our energy supply or technological advances impacting emissions. Other policymakers — including some in Wisconsin — have in response introduced legislation designed to ensure the continued right to use fossil fuels to heat and power buildings as well as cars and various other devices.