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Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

November 18, 2016

States ask Trump to restrain but not eliminate EPA

Dylan Brown, E&E News reporter  •    •  Posted 2016-11-18 06:44:46

The heads of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Alabama Department of Environmental Management, Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, North Dakota Department of Health and Environment, and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection penned a letter to Trump yesterday. “Our country still needs the EPA, but not the EPA of recent years,” they wrote. [ read more … ]

DOE: Uncertainty looms as Trump team moves in

Hannah Northey, E&E News reporter  •    •  Posted 2016-11-18 06:45:17

A week after President-elect Donald Trump clinched a White House victory, his looming presidency is still causing shudders among Energy Department staffers unsure of what the future holds. “It’s chaos, no one knows what … is going on,” said one career staffer who has worked on clean technology at DOE since the beginning of the Obama administration and asked not to be named. “Many of my peers do not agree with basically anything the Trump campaign stands for, and [wonder] what kind of people they will appoint. And so many of us are inclined to leave.” [ read more … ]

Take a deep breath and don’t freak out about the future of clean energy under Trump

By Chelsea Harvey, Washington Post  •    •  Posted 2016-11-18 06:45:41

A new report, released this week by the Georgetown Climate Center, illustrates the leaps made by 19 individual states across the country through strong policies aimed at diversifying the energy landscape and cutting carbon emissions. Nevada, for instance, leads the country in solar capacity per capita, according to the report, and its Renewable Energy Tax Abatement program has helped allow for the construction of 29 large-scale renewable energy projects. New York and California have both mandated that power companies source 50 percent of their electricity from renewables by the year 2030. Meanwhile, energy-saving programs in Massachusetts have made it the most energy-efficient state in the nation — and since 2007, its wind energy capacity has grown 70-fold and its solar capacity has grown 781-fold. [ read more … ]

Trump Isolated on Climate as World Works on Fossil Fuel Limits

By Jessica Shankleman, Bloomberg  •    •  Posted 2016-11-18 06:46:06

Donald Trump’s opposition to the fight against global warming could leave the U.S. stuck in the past as countries from Europe, Asia and even the Middle East pursue an energy revolution in which renewables offer a better bang for their buck. While Trump has promised to “cancel” the Paris deal and stimulate coal production once he takes over as U.S. president in January, others including the European Union, China and Saudi Arabia are vowing to press ahead with actions that will support renewable energy at the expense of fossil fuels. [ read more … ]

Trump Fears Push Nations at Morocco Talks to Call Climate Action an ‘Urgent Duty’

By Alister Doyle, Nina Chestney and Megan Rowling, Reuters  •    •  Posted 2016-11-18 06:46:24

Fears that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming pushed almost 200 nations at climate talks in Morocco on Thursday to declare action an “urgent duty”. Trump has called man-made global warming a hoax and has said he will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which seeks to wean the global economy off fossil fuels this century with a shift to renewable energies such as wind and solar power. [ read more … ]

7 Companies Support Clean Line in Letter to Arkansas Governor

By Kyle Massey, Arkansas Business Journal  •    •  Posted 2016-11-18 06:46:42

Seven companies with significant operations in Arkansas spoke out Tuesday in support of the controversial Plains & Eastern Clean Line power transmission project in a letter to Gov. Asa Hutchinson. The businesses, including manufacturers Ingersoll Rand, Unilever and LM Wind Power, expressed interest in renewable and low-cost wind power they say their companies could attain through the $2.5 billion high-line project, which would transmit Oklahoma-produced wind power across the width of Arkansas and offer 500 megawatts of electricity to consumers in the state via a converter station planned for Pope County. [ read more … ]

Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.