Energy

More drilling won’t help

We have a problem we can’t drill our way out of.Photo: arbyreedCross-posted from the Center for American Progress. Unrest in Libya and Egypt is driving up oil prices, stirring concerns that gasoline could hit $5 a gallon by summer. Like a smoker’s persistent cough, it’s another warning to change our ways. America sends nearly $1 billion […]

Daniel J. Weiss Energy

Wall Street Journal poll: Most popular spending cut is subsidies for new nuclear plants

It is no big surprise that Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or K-12 education. But the new WSJ/NBC poll does have some surprises: The survey found that the most popular potential spending cuts were subsidies to build new nuclear plants, with 57 percent support…. Of course, nuclear is absurdly over-subsidized (see “Nuclear […]

Joseph Romm Energy

Fred Upton’s bizarre war on 24 million Americans with asthma

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is teaming up with House Energy and Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to introduce a bill to allow America’s biggest polluters to continue dumping unlimited amounts of carbon emissions into the air. It’s not that surprising that Inhofe is pushing this in the Senate. […]

Peter Altman Energy

Can states keep clean energy jobs at home?

Photo: GreenforallCan a state with a renewable energy mandate require green jobs to stay at home? Litigation has made states into tepid defenders of their job rights, but states have the legal ground to go great lengths to keep more of the economic development from their renewable energy industry inside their borders. No renewable energy […]

John Farrell Energy

Upcoming congressional hearings at which a fetus should testify

Source photo: Lunar CausticThe Ohio state legislature is preparing to hear testimony from a 9-week-old fetus, which I assume will actually be a lawyer making a squeaky voice from behind a picture of an ultrasound. The fetus is testifying about whether it should be able to freeload off a woman’s organs while it’s waiting to […]

Jess Zimmerman Energy

Pittsburgh’s drinking water is radioactive, thanks to fracking. Only question is, how much?

The drinking water of tens of millions of Pennsylvanians is threatened by natural-gas fracking — including the 2.3 million who live in Pittsburgh.Photo: Via Tsuji Residents of Pittsburgh — as well as potentially tens of millions of other everyday citizens in the Northeast corridor who rely on their taps to deliver safe water — are […]

Christopher Mims Energy

EPA lets natural gas industry brazenly pollute my state’s drinking water

That’s some fracked up sh*t: a natural gas rig does its thing in Dimock, Pa. Photo: Helen Slottje, via arimooreIn a perfect world, everyone would read The New York Times’ frankly terrifying exposé on the EPA’s rather timid oversight of the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania — and public outrage would force the EPA to […]

Tom Laskawy Energy

Sen. Sherrod Brown and the Clean Air Act

Sen. Sherrod Brown.Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. There are things to like in Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-Ohio) letter to President Obama today about the Clean Air Act and carbon pollution. However, the letter is off base in its concern about EPA’s reasonable steps to assure that big new plants reduce their pollution to […]

David Doniger Energy

Wind production in Gansu, China

As of the end of 2009, according to the China Renewable Energy Industries Association, more than 10,000 utility-scale wind turbines had been installed nationwide. And in 2010, according to figures released last month by the China Industry Energy Conservation and Clean Production Association, China spent approximately $US 45.55 billion on 378 big wind power projects, […]

Keith Schneider Energy

Solar production in Gansu, China

In 2009, China launched a program to build the nation’s first big solar power projects, which produced two 10-MW photovoltaic power installations in Dunhuang, at Gansu’s far northern end. More than a dozen other solar energy projects -- totaling 280 MW -- will be completed this year.