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Trump Orders a Lifeline for Struggling Coal and Nuclear Plants
President Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to “prepare immediate steps” to stop the closing of unprofitable coal and nuclear plants around the country, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said on Friday. It remains to be seen what actions Mr. Perry will recommend, but many of the proposals being floated within the Trump administration, according to a leaked internal memo, would involve drastic government intervention in America’s energy markets. [ read more … ]
Trump Orders Action to Stem Coal, Nuclear Plant Shutdowns
President Donald Trump ordered his energy secretary to take immediate action to stem power plant closures, arguing that a decline in coal and nuclear electricity is putting the nation’s security at risk. “Impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix and impacting the resilience of our power grid,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in an emailed statement Friday. Trump has directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry “to prepare immediate steps to stop the loss of these resources and looks forward to his recommendations.” [ read more … ]
Trump’s plan to use a Cold War-era law to bolster the coal industry, explained
At the outset of the Korean War in 1950, President Harry S. Truman realized that the country needed to mobilize quickly to respond to the invasion of South Korea. After World War II, the massive military apparatus that had been constructed to beat the Nazis and Imperial Japan was being dismantled as Truman emphasized the nation’s nuclear arsenal at the expense of conventional weapons. When war broke out in Korea, Truman needed to reverse those trends and asked Congress for a law giving him the power to prioritize national defense over civilian needs. Congress passed and he signed the Defense Production Act that September. [ read more … ]
Trump orders DOE to halt coal, nuclear retirements
The White House is considering an Energy Department proposal to buy electricity from unidentified U.S. coal and nuclear power plants to prevent their “premature” retirement. The justification: heightened threats of cyberattacks and natural disasters. [ read more … ]
Policy & Politics
A Year After Trump’s Paris Pullout, U.S. Companies Are Driving a Renewables Boom
When President Trump announced on June 1 last year that the United States would exit the Paris climate deal, many of America’s largest corporations said they would honor the agreement anyway, vowing to pursue cleaner energy and cut emissions on their own. A year later, there’s one area where that pledge is highly visible: renewable energy. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies, from tech giants like Apple and Google to Walmart and General Motors, are voluntarily investing billions of dollars in new wind and solar projects to power their operations or offset their conventional energy use, becoming a major driver of renewable electricity growth in the United States. [ read more … ]
Record Amount of Renewable Energy Installed in 2017-Research
A record amount of renewable power capacity was installed worldwide last year as the cost of wind and solar became even more competitive with fossil fuels, research by renewables policy organisation REN21 showed. Renewable power generation capacity had its largest annual increase yet in 2017, with an estimated 178 gigawatts (GW) of capacity added, REN21 said in its annual renewables global status rep [ read more … ]
Massachusetts hoping to be nation’s offshore wind power hub
The announcement that Massachusetts will work with Rhode Island to bring up to 1,200 megawatts of offshore wind energy to the region marks a milestone in the state’s efforts to develop renewable energy. It’s been a long journey marked by fits and starts — most notably the abandoned effort to create the nation’s first wind farm off Cape Cod. [ read more … ]
Calif. and N.Y. put big money on charging infrastructure
California and New York last week made record-setting bets on electric transportation, with California regulators approving utilities to spend $738 million and New York’s governor pledging up to $250 million. The developments mean that two of the nation’s biggest and most liberal states will have more places to charge the wave of electric cars that automakers have said are coming by 2019. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.