Tag archives for coal
Posted by A lot of the debate over energy and climate change has focused on changing how people live. But in a lot of ways, where someone lives is as important as how they live. Not all parts of the United States are the same when it comes to how much and what kind of energy is…
Posted by A debate is in full-swing in northwest Washington state about the energy, economic, and environmental future of the region, where coal export terminals have been proposed to send U.S., and potentially Canadian coal to Asia. A plan to build a sprawling $665 million coal terminal northwest of Bellingham, Washington has been the focal point of…
Posted by A clean-coal lobbying group talks of a “shared … commitment” with the Obama administration on the environment. Hmm.
I’ve just arrived in Moscow for a meeting — the subject will be soot. You may hear it called black carbon or even elemental carbon. Scientists getting technical will call it the “light-absorbing part of particles suspended in the atmosphere.” Let’s just keep it simple and call it soot.* (More on black carbon.) Soot: pollution…
A lack of wind won’t stall our future renewable energy economy, but Congress might. Debunking the Myths That Take the Wind out of Wind Energy’s Sails Wind has its downsides. It’s intermittent; it’s too expensive. Fair points, but there are ways around them. For example the whole intermittency issue could be handled now by using…
How do Obama’s words on energy compare to Team Romney’s? Last week, while the Republicans were celebrating the Romney-Ryan ticket in Tampa, Florida, we posted a count-the-words analysis of their energy plan. The plan’s overall aim is to achieve energy independence for North America. The numbers told us the path to independence for the Romney…
Oil, gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, efficiency. Which are the Republican hopefuls’ priorities? This week, it’s convention time for the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees. Last week, the Romney-Ryan team rolled out its energy policy [pdf] for the nation. Entitled “The Romney Plan For A Stronger Middle Class: ENERGY INDEPENDENCE,” the new plan, running…
Posted by Peter Voser, the chief executive officer of Shell, sees a world where energy, food, and water resources face increasing stress, and where businesses can offer the leadership that national governments have failed to provide in the search for solutions. Shell is sponsor of National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge, an effort to engage and enlighten readers…
Something crucial was missing from the first-ever global inventory of tax breaks for oil companies and other fossil-fuel subsidies when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released it last fall. The report detailed all the subtle and not-so-subtle supports for production and consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas in 24 nations, including the world’s most advanced economies—all…
Does it make climate sense to drive cars with natural gas? Our nation appears to be rapidly moving to a natural gas-powered economy. Advances in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling have made huge deposits of natural gas in shale and tight sands commercially viable. (See “Hydrofracturing: An Energy Revolution.”) Suddenly the United States is…
EPA Makes Historic Announcement: First Greenhouse Gas Rule for New Power Plants
Posted by Tim Profeta of Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University on March 29, 2012 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released long-awaited greenhouse gas rules for new power plants this week. Using the Clean Air Act, the agency standard would set the first national limits on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions new power plants can emit. The EPA proposed the rule after delaying it several times since July 2011. Power plants are the largest…
Over the past decade, plans for 160 new coal fired power plants in the United States have been scrapped, largely due to rising costs and an inability to compete in today’s energy markets. That’s because the cost of once-“expensive” clean energy has fallen dramatically, while “cheap” fossil fuels are increasingly expensive in economic, health, and…
More than 100 Coal Plants Shutting, but How Much Difference Will It Make?
Posted by Mason Inman on March 8, 2012 After public pressure, Chicago will shut two aging coal-fired power plants, and the owner of one of the power plants, Midwest Generation, may shut its other four coal plants in Illinois. Since the start of 2010, more than 100 coal plants have been slated for early retirement. A major reason for coal plants shutting has been public opposition to…
Coal-Fired Haze Mars the Dark Skies of Big Bend
Posted by Amy Sinatra Ayres on February 16, 2012 Big Bend National Park is known for its beauty — and its haze problem. So it might come as a surprise to some that it recently earned the designation of a Gold Tier International Dark Sky Park. The designation makes the 801,000-acre (324,153-hectare) West Texas park, which borders the Rio Grande, one of only 10…
Highlights from a workshop on the environmental and social implications of fracking. A group of the nation’s leading experts on energy and the environment are at Duke this week attending a workshop to try to ferret out the facts (and tamp down the hype) around shale gas and fracking, the controversial method for extracting natural…
In North Korea’s capital city of Pyongyang, pictured above last year on May Day, light radiates from Juche Tower, the monument built to commemorate the 70th birthday of ruler Kim Il Sung in 1982. But that power did not flow to the nation’s people. Among the deprivations that marked the nuclear-armed era of Kim’s son,…
There’s some rare good news on the energy pollution front, confirmed by groundbreaking new use of satellite imagery. Emissions of sulfur dioxide, the acid rain precursor that ravages respiratory health, have fallen in half since 2005 over what has been one of the most coal-heavy areas of the eastern United States, reported scientists using the…
When assessing green energy subsidies, a little history helps. With Solyndra grabbing headlines (see here and here), “federal subsides” for green energy is beginning to challenge “regulations” as the epithet du jour among those proffering the sacrifice of America’s environment on the altar of the economy and jobs. (A false dichotomy in the opinion of…
Australia’s Wild Weather May Have Helped Push Carbon Tax
Posted by Mason Inman on October 13, 2011 Although Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard had promised before to not enact a carbon tax, floods, bush fires, heat waves, and drought reawakened discussion about putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions. This week, Australia’s House of Representatives narrowly passed a carbon tax, sending the bill to the country’s Senate, where observers say it is…
In the past, it was unions vs. mining companies. Today, environmentalists are lining up against mining companies over the practice of large-scale surface mining, aka mountaintop removal, in the Central Appalachians. Environmentalists claim the process permanently scars the land and pollutes the water. Mining interests maintain that pollution is limited, the land can be reclaimed, and coal mining is critical to West Virginia’s — and the nation’s — economic health.
Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies May Be the Way to Jumpstart Climate Finance
Posted by Mason Inman on September 23, 2011 A leaked World Bank document, due to be presented at the G20 meeting in November, proposes that rich countries eliminate their fossil fuel subsidies and instead contribute the money to climate aid for poor countries to help with green energy and adaptation measures. The paper also said donor countries are unlikely to come up with…
Posted by It is not widely discussed, but the United States does, in fact, have a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target. In the heady days of January 2010 after the Copenhagen Climate Conference, many nations put pen to paper and wrote to the UNFCCC pledging to reduce emissions by 2020 relative to some baseline. This was a…
Posted by Today, America relies on oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear to power our country. But our aging infrastructure demands refurbishment to meet 21st century needs. As Amory Lovins explains in his upcoming book, Reinventing Fire, efficiency and renewables can end our addiction to fossil fuels, create the core industries of the new energy era, generate…
Tar Sands Pipeline Gets Green Light in Environmental Review
Posted by Mason Inman on September 1, 2011 Hundreds of protesters—including famed climate researcher James Hansen—have been arrested in protests in front of the White House over the past two weeks, in an attempt to stop the construction of a pipeline from Canada to Texas to carry diluted tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries, mainly over concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and risks…
Whether at Christmas time or in the heat of summer, nobody likes a lump of coal. Unfortunately, that’s what the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is delivering in its latest report.
