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America’s Radioactive Secret
One day in 2017, Peter pulled up to an injection well in Cambridge, Ohio. A worker walked around his truck with a hand-held radiation detector, he says, and told him he was carrying one of the “hottest loads” he’d ever seen. It was the first time Peter had heard any mention of the brine being radioactive. The Earth’s crust is in fact peppered with radioactive elements that concentrate deep underground in oil-and-gas-bearing layers. This radioactivity is often pulled to the surface when oil and gas is extracted — carried largely in the brine. [ read more … ]
State of the States
Gov. Baker outlines goals in State of Commonwealth address
The Republican said one of his top goals for the new year is to help ease the worst effects of climate change in part by reducing carbon emissions. “Tonight, I’m committing the commonwealth to achieving an ambitious climate goal: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050,” Baker said. Key to reaching that goal Baker said, was to push for the adoption of a multi-state proposal called the Transportation and Climate Initiative that aims to reduce carbon emissions from cars, trucks and other means of transportation. [ read more … ]
Cuomo plots course to accelerate renewable energy development
Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants state agencies to develop shovel-ready sites for large-scale renewable projects as the private sector struggles with a challenging regulatory process.
Cuomo made the proposal on Tuesday during his budget address. He said New York needed to take the lead in doing more, faster, on the issue of climate change. “Setting goals without the means to achieve them is… baloney,” Cuomo said. “We have to do it faster. It currently takes five to 10 years to begin constructing a new energy project. You can’t have the goals we have and then have a system of bureaucracy that takes five to 10 years to start a new energy project. It just does not work.” [ read more … ]
Wind Energy
Murphy signs bill expanding definition of qualified offshore wind project
The measure requires developers seeking New Jersey Board of Public Utilities approval as a qualified offshore wind project to include within its detailed description for the project any transmission facilities and interconnection facilities to be installed. The bill allows the NJBPU to conduct one or more competitive solicitations for open access offshore wind transmission facilities designed to expedite the collection or delivery of offshore wind energy from qualified projects to the electric transmission system. [ read more … ]
Solar Energy
The Energy 202: Arizona’s biggest utility, which fought renewables in 2018, now wants to go carbon-free
Arizona’s biggest electric utility spent millions of dollars in 2018 to defeat a renewable energy ballot initiative. Just two years later, it now says it wants to get all of its power from carbon-free sources. As Steven Mufson and I report this morning, Arizona Public Service announced an ambitious plan to wean itself entirely off fossil fuels by 2050, with the intermediate goal of getting nearly two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear and renewable sources by 2030. The drastic about-face for the electric utility is a sign of how the political climate has changed. [ read more … ]
How Germany helped make renewable energy cheap for the rest of the world
Hans-Josef Fell describes himself as a “solar freak.” His entire home, in a small town in Northern Bavaria, runs on renewable energy: heating, cooling, and electricity. Fell installed his first solar panels in 1991, and though they cost him about $70,000 in today’s dollars, he considered them to be a worthwhile purchase to help fight climate change. At the time, most Germans either could not afford them or saw them as a losing financial investment. Fell realized he wanted to find a way to change that, so that his fellow countrymen would invest in renewable technology instead of fossil fuels. [ read more … ]
FERC
On the price floor
Grid operator PJM called on FERC to rewrite portions of its December order barring clean and nuclear energy from PJM’s long-term power auctions, Pro’s Gavin Bade reports. Ahead of FERC’s decision to impose a strict price floor, nuclear-heavy states warned they could remove their entire power sectors from that market if FERC did not allow individual plants to opt out. FERC did not provide that option for individual plants, and now PJM is worried states may exit by using an existing authority called the “Fixed Resource Requirement alternative.” [ read more … ]
FERC pressured to revist order targeting renewables
“FERC’s MOPR Order in the PJM capacity market actually bars consumers from paying less money for cleaner power,” said ACORE President and CEO Greg Wetstone. “It is a poorly disguised effort to undermine the success that cost-effective renewable energy has enjoyed in competitive electricity markets, and on every state’s authority to decide for itself where its electric power is generated.” [ read more … ]
Car Rule
Plan to Gut Obama’s Auto Mileage Rules Is Getting Dialed Back
The Trump administration has dialed back its plan to relax fuel-economy requirements for new automobiles, retreating from a bid to freeze the mandates for six years. A draft of the final rule, now undergoing a final White House review, includes several changes that could make it easier to defend in court and more palatable to some automakers that had refused to publicly endorse the earlier proposal. The changes were described by three people familiar with the measure who asked for anonymity before a formal announcement. [ read more … ]
2020
Factbox: Climate change plans of the leading U.S. Democratic candidates
The leading Democratic candidates all believe climate change is an existential threat to the planet and have vowed to bring U.S. greenhouse gas emissions down to net-zero by 2050.
While the candidates have the same broad goals, they vary in their approaches.
[ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.