Department of Energy
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Critical List: Energy Dept. picks more winners; natural gas boom comes to Ohio
The Department of Energy, always picking winners, you know? The first Quadrennial Technology Review, to be released today, favors technologies that could come into commercial use in 10 years — i.e. consumer goods you can spend money for. This could mean DOE favors EVs over new clean energy technologies.
This company, Renmatix, will probably make it under the wire, though. It says it has the right technology to make commercially viable biofuels from biomass and just opened a plant to forward development of the technique.
The natural gas boom comes to Ohio.
Although Beijing usually gets a bad rap on pollution, Central and South Asia are not great places to live if you like inhaling clean air, either. -
McConnell opposes energy loan guarantees — except in Kentucky
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is outraged that politically connected energy companies are getting loan guarantees ... outside of Kentucky, his home state.
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Solyndra is the next 'Climategate'
Conservatives are trying to use the bankruptcy of solar firm Solyndra to tar the whole renewables industry and all efforts by government to support it.
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Critical List: Federally backed solar company closes; London drops carbon offset plan for Olympics
Solyndra, a solar company that had received more than $500 million in federally backed loan guarantees, is shutting down.
Vermont's still reeling from Irene.
Oklahoma lawmakers are looking for ways to block the Keystone XL pipeline locally.
The organizers of the 2012 London Olympics are dropping their plan to offset the Games' carbon emissions. Weak.
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DOE panel calls for more study of fracking emissions
The panel's findings acknowledge that studies have produced conflicting results about just how "clean" the natural-gas industry is.
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Six of seven fracking committee members have ties to natural gas industry
The government is convening a panel of experts to weigh in on how (and whether) fracking can be made safer. Yay! Six of the seven committee members have financial ties to the natural gas industry -- including the chairman, who's a board member of two energy companies and has received $1.4 million from them over three years. Boo!
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Republicans: We must protect children from energy efficiency
Republican Rep. Sandy Adams wants to limit funding for Department of Energy websites that educate kids about efficiency. She doesn't know how much money that will save, but by god, we must stop children learning at any cost!
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Critical List: Oil prices drop; Soros invests in energy efficiency
Oil prices went down -- for about a minute, before they started climbing again -- after the International Energy Agency announced the release of emergency supplies.
The Department of Energy is backing the $2.6 billion Project Amp, which will install 733 megawatts of solar -- as much as was installed in all of 2010 -- in 28 states over four years.
To make it even clearer that the the vast liberal conspiracy has it in for dirty energy: The right wing’s favorite bogeyman George Soros joined forces with Google to invest $25 million in an energy efficiency company called Transphorm. (Don't worry, conspiracy theorists, it's only $25 million! They can't be that serious about this.) -
DOE shocker: the future will be like the past, but more so
Last October, I had some fun looking at the Department of Energy’s historic predictions of natural gas prices and noting their consistent failure to, uh, predict. From 2004 to 2010, natural gas prices were massively volatile, ranging from $4 to $11 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) (on an annual, inflation-adjusted basis). Not only did […]