Climate Energy
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Me, talking about the Clean Energy Standard [VIDEO]
Last week, I sat down for an interview with EnergyNow about the Clean Energy Standard that Obama introduced during his State of the Union. Senate Energy Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) recently put out a white paper soliciting ideas for how the policy should be constructed. In the first […]
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Obama did not ‘promise’ to veto an EPA-blocking bill
Journalism is hard.Photo: Alex ProimosA few weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted through H.R. 1, their continuing appropriations act. It was full of tax cuts for the rich and slashed funding for the poor, elderly, and vulnerable — the usual GOP stuff. The White House released a statement [PDF] vowing to veto it: If […]
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Solar is contagious
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Adam Browning of Vote Solar wrote about a recent study of the peer pressure effect of solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption. The study [PDF] notes that for every 1 percent increase in the number of installations in […]
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Foreign oil follies: Stop Obama if you think you’ve heard this one before
President Obama is talking big about reducing our consumption of foreign oil. We predict he’ll be just as successful as his predecessors … After the BP oil spill, The Daily Show did a roundup of past presidential calls for us to use less oil. As Jon Stewart concluded, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool […]
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How America could easily add 6 nuclear reactors’ worth of hydro power
A new analysis by Oakridge National Laboratory (ORNL) says that America could generate 12.6 gigawatts of always-on peak baseload power just by adding electrical generation capacity to existing dams that don't already have it. That's 12 6 (big) nuclear reactors' worth — the average reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant produced only 0.78 GW. [Update: Jesse Jenkins […]
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A year after the deadly Upper Big Branch mine disaster, not much has changed
Today marks the one-year memorial of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, which killed 29 workers. Massey Energy Co., which ran the Upper Big Branch mine, will idle production at its 60 underground mines today — but as safety reports and lawsuits pile up, it becomes increasingly clear that a one-day shutdown is not enough. […]
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Future of Pennsylvania is dystopian wasteland studded with natural gas wells
Time's cover story "Could Shale Gas Power the World?" is all about how we're going to get ourselves out of our current energy crisis by turning the Marcellus shale formation into a hydrocarbon war zone pockmarked with loud, noxious natural gas wells. The reserves in question happen to be underneath some of the most densely […]
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In face of ‘peak everything,’ governments shrug at environmental cost of energy
Less than a year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the U.S. government has begun issuing new permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Pundits think that despite a pause in the "nuclear renaissance," the same thing could happen to nuclear power plants in the wake of Fukushima, at least outside the U.S. The […]
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The coal power industry’s willfully deceptive picture of EPA rules
Every Republican who’s come within shouting distance of a microphone in the past year has charged the EPA with out-of-control, unconstitutional job-killing malefaction — “regulatory overreach” for short. More than a few conservative Dems, led by the crudely pandering Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have followed suit. This is their way of advocating for […]
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New reality show is ‘Ice Road Truckers’ for coal miners
The Spike network is set to run a show about coal miners, in the mold of Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers — gritty dudes fighting their way through the world’s hardest jobs. This has the potential to expose coal’s seamy underbelly, or to glamorize it beyond repair (at least in the minds of Spike-watching […]
