Despite the Biden administration’s enthusiasm for capturing carbon emissions from power plant and ethanol manufacturers, moving the CO2 by pipeline and storing it underground, other barriers continue to raise problems for the young technology. While technology to capture CO2 stack emissions has well-known problems, those appear to be engineering and economic issues, more likely to… More Legal landmines face CO2 pipelines
By David Wojick The State of Maine just got a very strange offshore wind lease from the Feds. They call it a research lease as opposed to a commercial development lease. It has some mysterious features that are worth pondering. There may even be a many-billion-dollar trick here. We consider that at the end, after… More Guest Commentary: Maine’s mysterious offshore wind lease
The Bill Gates-backed $9 billion sodium cooled fast nuclear reactor planned for Kemmerer Wyoming is worse than unnecessary, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. It’s dangerous. In comments to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on TerraPower’s 345-MW Natrium reactor request for a construction permit, UCS nuclear physicist Edwin Lyman says Kemmerer Unit 1 “is… More UCS debunks the Gates sodium-cooled fast reactor
Driven by recent court actions, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is facing a serious challenge to the way it handles natural gas pipeline cases. How the commission will react now that it has a full five members, and how a new administration may influence the decisions, likely will be a FERC focus in the months… More New FERC faces old challenges on natural gas pipeline decisions
Billed as a merger of equals, Pittsburgh-based coal giant Consol Energy is acquiring St. Louis-based coal giant Arch Resources in an all-stock deal. The combination is valued at a market capitalization of about $5.2 billion. The new firm – Core Natural Resources – will be based in Canonsburg, Pa., southwest of Pittsburgh where Consol is… More Combination and consolidation in coal country
The city of Berkeley, Calif., just won’t give up on its fixation about natural gas in its jurisdiction and its desire to be greener than green when it comes to greenhouse gases. At a special meeting July 30 to determine what items will appear on the city’s November election ballot, the city council unanimously approved… More Berkeley tries again to oust natural gas from the city limits
Denmark’s Orsted, the worldwide leading offshore wind developer, has recorded a $575 million loss in the second quarter, Reuters reports. In part, the loss is the result of disappointing developments in the U.S. The company has delayed commercial operation of its 704-MW Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut from 2025… More Roundup: Who knows which way the wind blows?
Seattle’s Energy Northwest, a municipal joint action agency that provides power to 29 municipal distributors across the Evergreen State, is moving forward on a plan to build a fleet of small modular nuclear reactors on the Department of Energy’s Hanford former weapons production site. Officials from Energy Northwest are scheduled to meet with staff from… More Energy Northwest goes for X-energy HTGR SMRs
A proposed financial reorganization of Central Maine Power (CMP), the state’s dominant electric company, is generating fierce consumer opposition at the Maine Public Utilities Commission. Augusta-based Avangrid (NYSE:AGR), CMP’s owner since 2015, is 81.6% owned by Spanish energy conglomerate Iberdrola, which wants the state regulators to rubber stamp a deal where Iberdrola would acquire the… More Should Central Maine Power go “dark” to the regulators?
(A three-part series) The controversial 922-page “Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a far-right Trump government is a political prescription for various reforms of energy and environmental programs in the Department of Energy, the Interior Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency. While Donald Trump has tried to distance himself in the… More Project 2025 part 3: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency