Like many of our treasured Main Street businesses, the past few years have been hard on these small fuel retailers. However, there may be even more factors pitted against them than other businesses. These factors are being overlooked by our political leaders and mainstream press. EPRINC’s Emeritus President and current Trustee Larry Goldstein briefly offers some explanations. His piece can be found here.
EPRINC held a virtual workshop on The Transport Climate Initiative (TCI): Challenges and Opportunities on June 16, 2021.
EPRINC staff, policymakers, and regional experts explored the effectiveness of the program to meet its goals of lowering greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions. Among the topics discussed were how the program fits in with U.S. and international efforts to accelerate the energy transition, an assessment of the program’s impact on consumers, implementation challenges, and opportunities for green investments.
The Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) is a regional collaboration of potentially 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia seeking to reduce consumption of petroleum-based fossil fuels in the transportation sector and introduce cleaner fuels and more effective transportation systems. The list of potentially participating jurisdictions are: Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.
The agenda for the event can be found here, the presentations that were given are here, and the full video recording of the event is here.
A report on the event was written by Ashutosh Shastri, Senior Advisor, Global Gas Centre & Distinguished Fellow, EPRINC, and can be accessed here.
Colonial Pipeline Hack Highlights Growing Energy Security Risks:
Infrastructure Cyberattacks are a Threat to National Security
The recent hack of the Colonial Pipeline computer systems, which disrupted gasoline supplies to the Northeast has raised a new set of energy security concerns. Although the attack was presumably not the actions of a state entity, it is hard not to view it as an act of terrorism given its potential for widespread disruption. This is not a new threat. In the late 1990s, President Clinton issued Presidential Directive 63 which recognized that growing threats to critical infrastructure had become “increasingly automated and interlinked.” The Directive mandated that within five years (by 2003) critical U.S. infrastructure would be hardened to cyberattacks. Despite the Directive, measures to protect infrastructure from growing cyberattacks have not kept up.
This report was published on RealClear Energy, but the full PDF version of the report can be found here.
The Institute of Energy Economics Japan (IEEJ) and the Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc. (EPRINC) jointly hosted a virtual workshop, “The Role of LNG in a Carbon-Constrained Market” on December 15, 2020, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm (Washington, D.C. – EST); December 16, 2020, 9:00 am – 11:00 am (Tokyo – JST).
This workshop was part of an ongoing cooperative program between IEEJ and EPRINC to explore the potential for LNG to meet rising energy demand and growing requirements for decarbonization in Asian markets. Japanese and U.S. energy research experts, senior representatives from U.S. and Japanese companies, officials from the Japanese Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry, and others came together for a discussion on policy and technology developments needed to address the challenges and opportunities for LNG as Asia’s growing energy consuming centers search for efforts to restrain carbon emissions and sustain economic growth.
The workshop agenda can be found here. The workshop was recorded and is accessible at this link using passcode: ?#?@s8cS
There were some excellent presentations given at the workshop, which can be downloaded here. In addition, EPRINC’s Max Pyziur provided all participants with a scene-setting presentation that is accessible here.