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Air Pollution Is Shortening Your Life. Here’s How Much.
Air pollution is shaving months — and in some cases more than a year — off your life expectancy, depending on where you live, according to a study published Wednesday. Worldwide, outdoor air pollution reduces the average life expectancy at birth by one year. The effect is much more pronounced in some countries: It cuts the average Egyptian’s life span by 1.9 years and the average Indian’s by 1.5 years. In Russia, it’s around nine months. [ read more … ]
California Wants to Unite the Western States Under One Power Grid
The legislature is considering a plan to expand a grid serving 30 million Californians to encompass as many as 13 other Western states — if they choose to join the effort. The California Independent System Operator, which currently manages a $9.3 billion wholesale market, would cede authority to a regional body under the proposal, which requires federal approval. [ read more … ]
Policy & Politics
Jerry Brown blasts ‘Trump’s insanity’ on clean power plan
Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday issued a damning condemnation of President Donald Trump’s plan to undo Obama-era regulations restricting greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, calling the president’s intention “a declaration of war against America and all of humanity.” [ read more … ]
Climate rule litigation: Here we go again?
New legal battles are already brewing over EPA’s plans to replace former President Obama’s landmark Clean Power Plan with a drastically scaled-back effort to cut carbon emissions from the power sector. The Trump administration’s proposal, dubbed the Affordable Clean Energy rule, discards the Clean Power Plan’s multifaceted approach to cleaning up the power grid and instead focuses narrowly on making coal-fired power plants more efficient. [ read more … ]
Trump’s new CO2 rule may help coal plants run for years longer
The Environmental Protection Agency officially put forward on Tuesday its proposal for replacing the Clean Power Plan, the heart of President Barack Obama’s efforts to curb greenhouse gases from the nation’s power plants. But folded into the Trump administration’s latest rollback is a change to a permitting program little known outside of industries that have to contend with it, such as the power sector. Under that program, called New Source Review, the EPA forces power plants to install pollution controls when they expand or upgrade facilities in ways that cause a notable uptick in total emissions of smog-forming pollutants. [ read more … ]
This section buried in EPA’s rule may be the most important
The Department of Energy’s initial subsidy plan was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. DOE has since revised its strategy and is now looking to aid coal and nuclear plants deemed critical to national security. And yesterday, Trump moved even closer to meeting Craft’s request. Buried in the president’s plan to water down the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is an overhaul of how NSR is applied to existing power plants. [ read more … ]
Rural utilities, red-state regulators cheer Trump rule
Rural electric cooperatives and municipal power providers could be significant beneficiaries of EPA’s proposed Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule to address greenhouse gas emissions. The proposed rule, unveiled yesterday as a replacement to the Clean Power Plan (CPP), would set guidelines for states to curb emissions through efficiency improvements at power plants. [ read more … ]
US military pushes clean energy with largest on-base battery
Global infrastructure firm AECOM says it has begun construction on an energy storage system at Fort Carson, Colo., that will utilize a 4.25 MW/8.5 MWh lithium-ion battery developed by Lockheed Martin to help reduce energy costs and improve resilience at the base. Once completed, the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) will be the largest stand-alone commercially contracted battery at an army base, according to the developers. The behind-the-meter system work to reduce peak electricity demand. [ read more … ]
Where is Trump’s ‘military plan’ for coal?
President Trump at a rally in West Virginia last night touted a “military plan” the White House is developing to boost the coal sector after casting windmills, gas pipelines and solar panels as vulnerable to wartime destruction. “You know what you can’t hurt? Coal,” Trump said from his podium to applause. “We’re working now on a military plan that’s going be something very special.” [ read more … ]
Laurence Tribe exits lawsuit, says he regrets his rhetoric
Legal heavyweight Laurence Tribe is bowing out of the litigation over the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. The Harvard University professor today filed paperwork notifying the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit of his withdrawal. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.