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Even if we start to fix climate change, the proof may not show up for 30 years
As if curbing climate change wasn’t tough enough already, the new research finds that even if humans sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions now — cutting carbon dioxide, methane and other pollutants by at least 5 percent or more a year — it could still take decades before it’s clear those actions are beginning to slow the rate of the Earth’s warming. In short, because of the massive amount of fossil fuels burned since the Industrial Revolution, and the complexity of the Earth’s climate, there’s no quick payoff from changing our fossil fuel habits, researchers found. [ read more … ]
Wind Energy
US offshore wind power spending has oil in its sights
Offshore wind has benefited from targets set by east-coast states for clean electricity. About 22,000 megawatts of generating capacity is “reasonably foreseeable” in federal waters of the Atlantic, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Boem) said — enough to supply more than 10m homes. The outlook for US offshore oil is stagnant even as the Trump administration attempts to open new areas for drilling. With good inland oil supplies, high exploration costs and worries about the environmental impact, offshore production is likely to rise by only 200,000 barrels a day in this decade, the Energy Information Administration forecasts. [ read more … ]
End of Iowa’s wind boom? Renewable rules spark fears
Iowa, a national leader in wind energy, is weighing new rules for siting renewable energy projects — regulations that could shake up a system that’s enabled billions of dollars of investment in the state over the past two decades. The Iowa Utilities Board initiated the rulemaking in May after denying a developer’s petition to site four large solar projects in the same manner as wind farms — by putting local government in control. [ read more … ]
Farmers say MidAmerican reneging on promise to pay for wind turbine construction damage
About two-dozen farmers and landowners in western Iowa say MidAmerican Energy is failing to fully pay them for damage caused when building an 81-turbine wind farm in Ida County.
It’s another point of tension in the relationship between rural residents and the Des Moines company, which has made Iowa a national leader in wind generation, building about 3,000 turbines across the state. [ read more … ]
California Fuel Economy Waiver
California fuel economy waiver
A bipartisan group of former EPA and Transportation Department chiefs filed a friend-of-the-court brief this week criticizing the Trump administration’s revocation of California’s fuel economy waiver as having no “no valid legal, factual, or logical basis.” The Trump administration moved in 2019 to rescind California’s special waiver allowing it and more than a dozen other states to enforce tailpipe pollution limits that are more stringent than the federal levels. [ read more … ]
Transmission
Big spending, legal appeals in $1B transmission project
Central Maine Power and Hydro Quebec have spent more money in support of a $1 billion hydropower transmission project than the spending total on a failed referendum on a casino in York County in 2017, an environmental advocacy group said Tuesday. CMP and Hydro Quebec have together spent nearly $17 million — $10.5 from CMP and $6.2 million by Hydro Quebec, according to records filed with the state ethics commission. That’s more than the roughly $9 million spent in 2017 on the failed casino proposal [ read more … ]
EVs
Why the Cars of Our Self-Driving Future Will Be Electric
Cars aren’t going away any time soon. So the ultimate green move will be combining two emerging technologies: autonomous driving and fully electric cars. Autonomy brings efficiency in driving and battery use, while electric cars drastically cut emissions, fuel costs and maintenance. Even so, a rift has developed within the automobile industry about the best way to move forward. Skeptics believe self-driving technology will have a serious impact on an electric car’s range and degrade batteries; optimists think improvements in technology will likely mitigate much of that trade-off. [ read more … ]
PPP
Gov’t loans go to green groups battling Trump rollbacks
Dozens of environmental groups, including several that are suing the Trump administration, received millions of dollars in government loans through the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), records show. Recipients of the program, which is meant to keep people employed during the pandemic, include Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, Oceana, American Rivers, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Green America, Earthworks and the Western Environmental Law Center (WELC), according to data released Monday by the Treasury Department. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.