The last few yards are always the toughest.
The UK has been making reasonable progress down a path towards its legally binding climate goals, but it currently has...
Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - 15:08 • Sharon Kelly
In a major blow to proponents of “clean coal” technology, Southern Co., parent company of Mississippi Power, announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing today that it's throwing in the towel on efforts to generate electricity from coal and will instead use only natural gas at its flagship Kemper County, Mississippi power plant.
The project, which relied on a “gasifier” to turn a cheap and common grade of coal into fuel, is over, at least for now, Southern said.
“On June 28, 2017, Mississippi Power notified the Mississippi PSC that it is beginning a process to suspend operations and start-up activities on the gasifier portion of the Kemper IGCC.”
Further, Southern warned that it may record a $3.4 billion loss for the project in the second quarter of 2017, depending on how negotiations with state utility regulators unfold.
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Monday, July 3, 2017 - 06:48 • Ben Jervey
A few months ago, early in the state legislative sessions, we reported on how lawmakers in nine states had introduced bills that would penalize electric vehicle (EV) drivers by charging higher registration fees. Now that the state legislative sessions have mostly wrapped up, it’s time for a review of how these bills fared, and how many states have implemented this extra financial burden on anyone who buys or leases an electric car.
Saturday, July 1, 2017 - 07:07 • Guest
In recent weeks, a new energy buzzword has taken flight from Washington, D.C., making stops in Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, Utah and more: “American energy dominance.” Taking a cue from a 2016 speech by then-candidate Donald Trump, top federal officials including Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have begun to trumpet the notion of energy “dominance.”
Although no Cabinet official has offered a precise definition, it’s a recurring theme in a set of administration events organized around energy policy, including a speech by Trump emphasizing exports of coal, natural gas, and oil.
So what does this new energy catchphrase mean, and how should we think about it?
Friday, June 30, 2017 - 11:22 • Julie Dermansky
Jackie Dill, 64, a renowned Oklahoman wildcrafter of Cherokee descent and environmental activist who spoke out against the government’s failure to hold the fracking industry responsible for Oklahoma’s earthquakes, died on June 28, a few days after suffering a heart attack.
I met Dill in January 2016 while reporting on Oklahoma’s earthquake swarms. She told me that she feared she would be killed by her house falling in and crushing her and her husband. Dill’s home in Coyle, Oklahoma, is on one of the state’s active fault lines and was so badly damaged by the constant earthquakes that she moved out a couple months before her death.
Friday, June 30, 2017 - 08:00 • David Suzuki
Spring flooding in Canada this year upended lives, inundated city streets and swamped houses, prompting calls for sandbags, seawalls and dikes to save communities.
Ontario and Quebec's April rainfall was double the 30-year average. Thousands of homes in 130 Quebec municipalities stretching from the Ontario border to the Gaspé Peninsula flooded in May. Montreal residents raced to protect their homes and families as three dikes gave way and the city declared a state of emergency. The Ontario government had to boost its resources for an emergency flood response.
In Atlantic Canada, some parts of New Brunswick recorded more than 150 millimetres of rain during a nearly 36-hour, non-stop downpour. In B.C.'s Okanagan, rapidly melting snowpack and swelling creeks caused lake levels to rise to record heights. The City of West Kelowna declared a state of emergency and evacuated homes.
Thursday, June 29, 2017 - 16:11 • Graham Readfearn
Did any of the panel have any advice, the female questioner from Houston asked, about buying gold and silver stocks to help protect them from the New World Order?
The setting was a packed hall in Bozeman, Montana, for the inaugural Red Pill Expo, and it was the British hereditary peer, Lord Christopher Monckton, who jumped at the chance to give advice on commodities.
“It’s a good idea to keep silver rather than gold,” said Monckton. “Communists tend to confiscate gold but silver takes more storage, so they don’t confiscate that. So the thing to do is hold silver.”
Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - 18:24 • Ashley Braun
In Paris in 2015, more than 195 nations committed to slowing the rise of global warming to less than 3.6°F (2°C). In 2016, renewable energy saw unprecedented growth around the world.
Yet in 2017, more than 120 companies have plans to build new coal-fired power plants (or expand existing ones), increasing coal capacity by roughly 43 percent across the globe. That’s more than 840,000 megawatts (MW) of additional coal power.
Some of those expansions are slated to occur in countries that don’t yet have any coal power, including Egypt and Malawi, likely locking them into at least 40 years of polluting infrastructure.
This is according to an analysis just released by the German environmental nonprofit Urgewald, which states that if all of these coal expansion plans go ahead, the resulting average rise in global temperatures would be a blazing 7.2°F (4°C).
Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - 03:57 • Itai Vardi
As part of its review of Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast pipeline, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) recently hired a private contractor to assess several elements of the project.
DeSmog has found, however, that the contractor is currently working for Dominion on an unrelated project.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - 13:57 • Justin Mikulka
This week, a court in California overturned a permit allowing the expansion of an oil-by-rail terminal near Bakersfield, California. The opinion from that court ruling reads like a case study for corporations looking to avoid the two biggest hurdles to getting such a project approved: environmental review and public notice and comment.
Monday, June 26, 2017 - 18:16 • Julie Dermansky
Pastor Harry Joseph of the Mount Triumph Baptist Church in St. James, Louisiana, is taking legal action to prevent the Bayou Bridge pipeline from being built in his community, roughly 50 miles west of New Orleans. He is named as a plaintiff in a case filed by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, petitioning the Parish Court to overturn the coastal permit that the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) gave Energy Transfer Partners, the company that built the controversial Dakota Access pipeline.
The Bayou Bridge pipeline will be the last leg of the Dakota Access, carrying oil fracked in North Dakota to Louisiana. The final stretch of the project, if built, will span 162.5 miles from Lake Charles to St. James, cutting through the Atchafalaya Basin, a national heritage area and the country’s largest wetland.
