Energy & the Environment News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

"The US is taking a big risk by doubling down on fossils and combustion cars. It may find in the 2030s that it has achieved the worst of all worlds: left on the sidelines of the global electro-tech economy, while at the same time dependent again on imported oil and gas."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... can-tears/

[firestar464]

Trump Administration Aims to Eliminate E.P.A.’s Scientific Research Arm

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/clim ... OWbfrJvXqT

[firestar464]

Jury finds Greenpeace at fault for protest damages, awards pipeline developer more than $660 million

https://northdakotamonitor.com/2025/03/ ... -millions/

[firestar464]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Is there any way to describe this, other than pure evil?


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Is planting trees 'DEI'? Trump administration cuts nationwide tree-planting effort

March 21, 2025

The Trump administration's efforts to end federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs has hit an unexpected target: In February, communities around the country learned that funding was canceled for a nationwide tree-planting program aimed at making neighborhoods cooler, healthier and more resilient to climate change.

The urban forestry initiative, administered by the nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation, was supposed to distribute $75 million in grant funding to about 100 different cities, nonprofit organizations and tribes to plant shade trees in neighborhoods that need them the most. The program was funded by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included big investments in climate initiatives.

In a letter terminating the contract, the U.S. Forest Service stated the program "no longer aligns with agency priorities regarding diversity, equity and inclusion." The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, said in an emailed statement that the agency was complying with President Trump's executive orders.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/21/g-s1-550 ... ate-change



Arbor Day Foundation

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Trump to sign executive order to help dying U.S. coal industry

Story by Maxine Joselow 28m 2 min read

{snip the picture

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President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Tuesday aimed at boosting the struggling U.S. coal industry, according to White House officials. ... Flanked by coal miners wearing hard hats at the White House, Trump will direct federal agencies to loosen various restrictions on coal mining, leasing and exports. He will instruct the Interior Department to resume coal leasing on millions of acres of public lands, and he will order the Energy Department and other agencies to study whether more coal-fired power plants can supply electricity for artificial intelligence data centers.

These directives, however, are unlikely to usher in a coal renaissance. Domestic coal production has declined dramatically in recent years because of market forces that have driven down the price of natural gas and renewable energy -- the same market forces that are now raising the risk of a recession caused by Trump's tariff policies.

Trump on Tuesday will also task the newly created National Energy Dominance Council with designating coal as a mineral, a White House official said. This classification will allow coal to benefit from a prior executive order that directed agencies to fast-track the permitting process for new mines on federal lands, according to the official. ... "Today at 3PM, President Trump will sign an Executive Order to reinvigorate AFFORDABLE, RELIABLE, AND CLEAN COAL!" White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X on Tuesday. "Coal is critical to achieving American Energy and AI Dominance."

While the phrase “clean coal” is popular among Trump’s allies, coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel. It produces more planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions than natural gas when burned, and few companies are using the nascent technology that captures these emissions and stores them deep underground. ... Although Trump made coal central to his first campaign, a coal revival never materialized during his first term. A boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, flooded the market with cheap natural gas, while construction of new coal plants ground to a halt. ... U.S. coal output tumbled 26 percent from 2017 to 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign contends that 383 U.S. coal plants have closed down or proposed to retire. About 200 remain, with 175 generating significant electricity, according to the EIA.

{snip}

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... r-AA1CwMom

[weatheriscool]

[caltrek]

Clean Energy Powered 40% of Global Electricity in 2024, Report Finds
by Jillian Ambrose
April 7, 2025

Introduction:

(The Guardian) The world used clean power sources to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year for the first time since the 1940s, figures show.

A report by the energy thinktank Ember said the milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years.
The report found that solar farms had been the world’s fastest-growing source of energy for the last 20 consecutive years.

Phil MacDonald, Ember’s managing director, said: “Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world’s ever-increasing demand for electricity.

Overall, solar power remains a relatively small part of the global energy system. It made up almost 7% of the world’s electricity last year, according to Ember, while wind power made up just over 8% of the global power system.

Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2 ... t-finds

caltrek’s comment: The article also describes how hydro-electric power “made up a large proportion of global electricity in the 1940s – when the power system was about 50 times smaller than it is today.”

I hadn’t quite realized that before, although it does fit with the development of hydroelectric power in the U.S. as described by Marc Reisner in Cadillac Desert. I used to write about the need to rely on renewable sources of energy and then list solar, wind, tidal and hydroelectric. The overbuilt nature of hydroelectric in the 1940s limited that option as a new source of energy. Tidal never materialized on a massive scale as a viable and cost effect alternative for reasons still not clear to me. Thankfully, solar and wind have come through, with solar (coupled with battery technology) in particular being the most important source of new energy.

[firestar464]

2 Judges Order Federal Agencies to Unfreeze Climate Money

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/clim ... reeze.html

[firestar464]

Three burn parameters can make prescribed forest fires burn safer and cleaner

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-parameter ... eaner.html

[firestar464]

Airborne microplastics infiltrate plant leaves, raising environmental concerns

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-airborne- ... ental.html

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

Fossil Fuels No Longer Majority of US Electricity!
11 hours ago
Zachary Shahan
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/19/fo ... ectricity/

Last Updated on: 20th April 2025, 12:00 am

The cleantech revolution continues on — every … single … day. It seems like such a short time that we’ve gone from the huge milestone of solar and wind power providing more than 50% of new power capacity additions in the US to solar and wind power now providing almost 100% of new power capacity additions in the US. Though, even during all of that growth, the difficult thing to look at is how slowly it takes to transition the actual electricity generation supply. So, it’s particularly uplifting to see that last month, we crossed another big milestone — less than 50% of US electricity was produced by fossil fuels for the first time on record.

[weatheriscool]

Zero-Emissions Electricity Surpasses 40% of World Electricity
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/19/ze ... ectricity/

Solar and wind power have been dominating new power installations all around the world. Renewables accounted for 92.5% of new power capacity globally in 2024, a stunning achievement, even if it’s been expected for the past decade.

All of that new power capacity from clean, renewable energy is also gradually pushing up the share of our electricity that’s produced from renewables. As a result, zero-emissions electricity sources reached a new milestone recently. Energy think tank Ember recently reported that the world got 40.9% of its electricity from zero-emissions sources last year. (Note that this includes electricity from nuclear power plants.)

[firestar464]

Fossil Fuels No Longer Majority of US Electricity!
11 hours ago
Zachary Shahan
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/19/fo ... ectricity/

Last Updated on: 20th April 2025, 12:00 am

The cleantech revolution continues on — every … single … day. It seems like such a short time that we’ve gone from the huge milestone of solar and wind power providing more than 50% of new power capacity additions in the US to solar and wind power now providing almost 100% of new power capacity additions in the US. Though, even during all of that growth, the difficult thing to look at is how slowly it takes to transition the actual electricity generation supply. So, it’s particularly uplifting to see that last month, we crossed another big milestone — less than 50% of US electricity was produced by fossil fuels for the first time on record.

Let's hope this holds...

[caltrek]

Earth Day: Trump’s EPA Promotes Evangelical Myth that Environmentalism Is a False Religion
by Steve Rabey
April 22, 2025

Introduction:

(Baptist News Global) Today’s Earth Day commemoration is the first since the United States officially adopted the falsehood that conservative evangelicals have embraced for decades: That people concerned about the environment and climate change are motivated by anti-Christian religion.
Lee Zeldin, President Donald Trump’s climate-skeptic EPA administrator, promoted the idea in a March 12 news release in which he announced “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.”

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” said Zeldin, a Jewish Republican and former New York Congressman who says his faith informs his public service.

Zeldin said the EPA will undertake 31 historic actions that will weaken pollution regulations, cancel grants and halt studies of climate change and its causes, “fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law and give power back to states to make their own decisions.”

Among the cuts is a Princeton University project researching sea-level rise and coastal flooding. Trump’s EPA says the research promoted “exaggerated and implausible climate threats” and increased “climate anxiety” among young Americans, but the cuts could harm America’s agriculture, transportation and energy industries

Read more here: https://baptistnews.com/article/earth- ... ligion/