The Quad Report

(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 a variety of 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… More Project 2025: What it says about energy, environment, and public lands

“Valley So Low” is a gripping autopsy of the largest industrial accident in U.S., the 2008 failure of the enormous coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s giant Kingston power plant near Knoxville. The book provides a thorough, thoughtful, and impeccably researched history covering an event that continues to provide lessons today. Journalist Jared… More Review: Valley So Low: one lawyer’s fight for justice in the wake of America’s great coal catastrophe

Several state attorneys general have launched initiatives to protect consumers against shady solar panel installers. It’s a widespread problem as many states encourage rooftop photovoltaic panels and many home improvement contractors are offering to install the panels. Among the most active AGs is Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, who has been cracking down on solar scammers since… More Sunburn: state AGs pursue dodgy solar installers

“The ink has gone dry on FERC’s rubber stamp for gas projects,” commented Moneen Nasmith, Earthjustice senior attorney. The greenhouse gas impacts of FRC’s decisions granting authority for new natural gas pipelines has again come into public view. Yesterday (July 30) the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals bluntly rejected a January 2023 FERC order approving… More D.C. Circuit slams FERC’s wink-nod pipeline greenhouse gas policy

Holtec International’s plan to resurrect the shuttered Pilgrim nuclear plant in Michigan is generating optimism. If successful, could nuclear grave robbing could come to life, decommissioning morphing into recommissioning? Speaking at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last week (July 23), Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Christopher Hanson told U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich) that… More Holtec: Palisades restart progress, Pilgrim decommissioning setback, UK factory examined

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee leadership this week (July 23) unveiled legislation designed to streamline permitting of energy infrastructure projects, including new interstate electric transmission projects. The prospects are unclear in a presidential election year. The legislation, the “Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024,” is the product of committee Democratic (now an independent… More Manchin-Barrasso energy permitting bill born

Will sodium displace lithium as the key to high-density, long-lasting batteries to power smart phones, electric vehicles, and turn intermittent solar and wind power into dispatchable electricity? Are iron-air batteries heavyweights aimed at becoming serious contenders for the battery energy storage crown? Lithium’s strength is known. It is a muscular lightweight, the lightest metal on… More Look out Li, Na and Fe want to beat your butt

The U.S. Interior Department has shut down the planned 804-MW Vineyard 1 wind project operating and under construction in federal waters some 15 miles off Nantucket Island. The order came after a blade on one of the 13-MW wind turbines shattered on July 17 spreading debris, some of which washed up on beaches on the… More Interior shuts down large Mass. offshore wind farm after blade failure

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has stomped down two separate, nearly identical coal-fired utility challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s long-running rules on cleaning up coal ash ponds. In a ruling June 28, the three-judge panel rejected a claim from the utilities that somehow groundwater and rainfall are different and the EPA’s 2015 coal… More Coal ash: Water, water everywhere, not all alike?

As a sometimes historian of the U.S. infatuation with nuclear power, military and civilian, I thought I had come across most of the bizarre tales of nuclear things gone wrong: Idaho’s SL1 death machine; the atomic powered bomber to nowhere; the flightless Kiwi at Jackass Flats; Edward Teller’s atomic earth blaster project disingenuously named “Plowshare;”… More The cold sad tale of “Nukey Poo”