Climate Energy

Drilling company's coloring book sells fracking to kids

Kids! Are you worried about natural gas companies pumping mysterious chemicals into the rocks near your house, leaking methane gas, poisoning cattle, and making your water flammable? Well, don't be! A coloring book from Talisman Energy says everything will be fine, and afterwards there will be deer and rainbows. 

Why tapping the strategic petroleum reserve is a bad idea

When it comes to oil, this is what the U.S. looks like to the rest of the world

The Obama administration has decided over the next two months to release 60 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is kind of like giving Bubbles from the Wire $5 when he's in the middle of one of his smack binges -- it's not really going to affect consumption, and it sure as hell doesn't address the root problem, which is our seemingly insuperable addiction to oil.

How utilities make money while investing in cleaner generation

Calling the EPA's mercury reforms "anti-business" is good for exciting a political base during the campaign season, but it doesn't match reality.

Harnessing the mighty Mississippi for power

If you’ve been anywhere near a newspaper recently, you know that the Mississippi river has an unbelievable amount of kinetic energy, which lately it has mainly been using for wreckin’ stuff. It’s like an angry teenager who discovers he’s a superhero. But hydropower advocates are hoping to convince it that with great power comes great responsibility, cooking up plans to put enough small hydroelectric plants on existing dams to rival the total hydro production of the Pacific Northwest.

Critical List: U.S. nuclear plants leak radioactive materials; Big Oil is the bad guy in Cars 2

Three quarters of nuclear power plants in the U.S. have leaked radioactive tritium.

The White House promised to put solar panels on its roof by the end of spring but didn't. Come on -- the environmental community can’t even get a symbolic gesture now? Throw us a bone, dude!

Global warming was supposed to save a few lives by creating milder winters in which fewer people would freeze to death. But by 2040, deaths from heat waves will outstrips lives saved in the winter.

Rick Perry signs weirdly reasonable fracking disclosure law

Rick Perry must have a secret plan to recapture George W. Bush's long-squandered image as an aisle-crossing Texas governor and run for president to the left of the Tea Party-addled Republican field. Or maybe he just decided to something right for a change. Whatever his motivation, the Texas guv signed into law a bill that requires natural gas drillers to disclose the chemicals they're pumping into ground during hydrofracking.

Do we have to choose between big or small clean energy projects?

The choice comes from the reality that financial resources are limited, the system of regulations and incentives are skewed toward big, centralized solutions, and choosing one strategy (long-distance transmission of centralized generation) necessarily reduces the money available and future prospects for expanded distributed generation.

U.S. nuke regulators repeatedly weakened safety rules

The Associated Press has a blockbuster study of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC has been working closely with the nuclear industry to keep aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards.

Pipeline industry funded two-thirds of pipeline safety studies

Wondering whether natural gas and oil transportation pipelines are safe? Why not ask a neutral objective party -- like, say, the pipeline industry? The federal government’s Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is supposed to study and regulate pipeline safety. But as the San Francisco Chronicle discovered, in practice, the agency tends to hand that responsibility back over to the pipeline industry.

NY Times lets dirty energy soil its op-ed page

Robert Bryce got a seat last week next to Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof on the Times’ opinion page, with a piece of pro-dirty energy propaganda