NewsTrust - Energy - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

The Greenest Place in the U.S. May Not Be Where You Think

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Yale Environment 360 - By David Owen - Nov. 05 (Special Report) - Green rankings in the U.S. don’t tell the full story about the places where the human footprint is lightest. If you really want the best environmental model, you need to look at the nation’s biggest — and greenest — metropolis: New York City.

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Scientists: Biofuel Laws May Harm Environment

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

wbur.org - By Richard Harris - Oct. 23 (News Report) - One key part of the climate bill has to do with fuels made from green plants. These can reduce the use of fossil fuels, and they also are a big draw for farm-state votes. But scientists writing in the current issue of Science magazine point out a huge error in existing biofuel laws that could actually make climate change worse. They say these rules inadvertently encourage deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming.

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Trade Your Job

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Valerie Saturen - Oct. 22 (News) - high school students who aren't headed for college are learning to retrofit houses; they stand to make up to $50 an hour once they're experienced journeymen. In Lansing, Michigan, unemployed auto workers can get up to $10,000 to train for new careers in renewable energy. .read more

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Lindsey Graham: Not a Nuclear Wussypants

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kate Sheppard - Oct. 16 (News Report) - When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for legislation last week to cap carbon emissions, he revived hopes that a cap-and-trade measure could pass the Senate this year. (He also got branded a "wussypants" by tea party protesters for his trouble.) But

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The Coalfield Uprising

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Jeff Biggers - Oct. 01 (Special Report) - ...while officials are framing the issue as a manageable environmental problem, mountaintop removal has also caused....one of th largest displacements of US citizens since the nineteenth century... .

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Solar Power Helps Squeeze Last Drops from Old Oil Wells

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By John Perlin - Sep. 19 (Special Report) - Last month, the oil and solar industry joined hands in an oil field about a century off its prime that Chevron owns in Coalinga, Calif., where steam is required to sufficiently thin what oil remains so it can be extracted. The oil company signed a deal with Bright Source Energy to build a demonstration project: Thousands of flat mirrors will reflect concentrated sunlight on a boiler atop a tower, superheating the water to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce high-pressure steam.

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EPA turns the lights on mountaintop removal

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - Sep. 11 (News Report) - This post originally appeared at TheNation.com . The Environmental Protection Agency made good on its promise today to assert greater scrutiny and “use the best science and follow the letter of the law” with regard to controversial mountaintop removal mining permits in the Appalachian coalfields. In a highly anticipated announcement, the agency declared that all seventy-nine pending permits in four states would “likely cause water quality impacts” and sent them on for additional review under the Clean Water Act. Does today’s big announcement end the practice of mountaintop removal—which has clear-cut more than 1.2 million acres of deciduous forests, employed billions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil ...

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Home power plants project unveiled in Germany

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - Sep. 09 (News) - An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people’s basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year.

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Could we replace the nation’s pavement with solar panels?

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By David Roberts - Aug. 28 (News Report) - So crazy it just might work? Apparently the Dept. of Transportation thinks so: Solar Roadways has received a $100,000 contract from DOT to build a prototype:

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Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Anna Lenzer - Aug. 23 (Special Report) - THE INTERNET CAFé in the Fijian capital, Suva, was usually open all night long. Dimly lit, with rows of sleek, modern terminals, the place was packed at all hours with teenage boys playing boisterous rounds of video games. But one day soon after I

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Greens call for reduction in palm kernel imports

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

odt.co.nz - Aug. 23 (News Report) - Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said palm kernel and palm oil was produced on land cleared of tropical rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia, which was a major source of carbon emissions and the extinction of animals.

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Climate change ranked as a threat to U.S. security

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Pioneer Press - By John M. Broder - Aug. 09 (News Report) - The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

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Debating coal's future

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

poweringanation.org - By Sara Peach - Aug. 04 (Special Report) - The residents of Meigs County, Ohio, live beneath the towering smokestacks of four coal-fired power plants. In the latest salvo in a battle over the way the U.S. gets electricity, a fifth plant could be built there soon. Some local people are organizing opposition to the proposed plant, while others are eager for the jobs it may bring.

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Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Kevin Bullis - Aug. 03 (News Report) - The solar industry says incremental advances have made transformational technologies unnecessary.

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Of Two Minds About Cap and Trade

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

American Spectator - By Paul Chesser - Aug. 03 (News Report) - Is hyper-bipolar a word? If so, it would aptly describe the global warming policy views of Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who this year also has additional roles as chairman of both ...

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Forged letters to congressman anger local groups

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Charlottesville Daily Progress - By Brian McNeill - Jul. 31 (News Report) - As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

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Study Finds Rich U.S. Energy-Efficiency Potential

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

worldwatch.org - By Ben Block - Jul. 31 (Special Report) - The potential for energy-efficiency improvements throughout the U.S. economy is huge and entirely within reach if annual investments increase fivefold, according to a new McKinsey & Company report. The global consulting firm estimates that $520 billion in investments would reduce U.S. non-transportation energy usage by 9.1 quadrillion BTUs by 2020 - roughly 23 percent of projected demand. As a result, the U.S. economy would save more than $1.2 trillion and avoid the release of some 1.1 gigatons of annual greenhouse gases, an amount equal to replacing 1,000 conventional 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants with renewable energy.

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Exxon Mobil's US lobbying exceeds clean-energy spending

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BusinessDay.com.au - Jul. 31 (Special Report) - Exxon Mobil, the biggest US oil producer, spent more on Washington lobbying during the first half of the year than all clean-energy companies combined, researcher New Energy Finance said.

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EEStor CEO says game-changing energy storage device coming by 2010

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By David Roberts - Jul. 30 (Special Report) - If the Texas company EEStor is running a scam, it’s a frakking brilliant one. For years the otherwise tight-lipped outfit has been promising a capacitor that can quickly charge, quickly discharge, and hold enormous amounts of energy—on all accounts, performance far beyond any battery on the market, or even contemplated. If it performs as promised, the EESU (Electrical Energy Storage Unit) will revolutionize the electric vehicle market. It will enable cost-effective, high-capacity storage for renewable electricity sources. It can radically increase the utility of portable electronics. It would be an honest-to-god game changer.

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A Biofuel Process to Replace All Fossil Fuels

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Kevin Bullis - Jul. 29 (News Report) - Joule Biotechnologies grows genetically engineered microorganisms in specially designed photobioreactors. The microorganisms use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol or hydrocarbon fuels (such as diesel or components of gasoline). The organisms excrete the fuel, which can then be collected using conventional chemical-separation technologies.

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Pakistan Observer Newspaper online edition

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Pakistan Observer - By Sharafat Kazmi - Jul. 28 (News Report) - Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani says increasing power generation is the top priority of the government and development funds have been diverted to meet the energy shortage.

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POWER POLITICS: Is the proposed clean energy agency a dirty deal for taxpayers and the environment?

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

southernstudies.org - By Sue Sturgis - Jul. 27 (News Analysis) - U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a new independent federal agency to promote government investment in clean energy. But watchdogs are raising questions about whether the way the proposed agency is structured is unfair to taxpayers and bad for the environment. Among their concerns are its bias toward nuclear power -- a critical issue for the South, which is at the center of the nuclear industry's planned revival.

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French panel to recommend carbon tax on fuel

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

timesoftheinternet.com - Jul. 23 (News) - A French experts' panel is to recommend introducing a carbon tax on fuel from January 2010, as part of a government drive to slash global warming emissions, the group's head said on Wednesday.

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Will Iraq Be a Global Gas Pump?

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Michael T. Klare - Jul. 17 (Special Report) - Iraq's great hydrocarbon promise has been continually thwarted by war, foreign intervention, sanctions, internal disorder, corruption, and plain old ineptitude. Saddam Hussein did succeed for a time in elevating oil output, in the process raising national income and creating a well-educated middle class. However, his ill-conceived invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 led to devastating attacks on Iraqi oil facilities, as well as trade embargoes and crippling debt, erasing much of his country's previous economic gains. The trade sanctions imposed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the wake of the First Gulf War only further eroded the country's oil-production capacity.

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Power lurks in Oregon forests ?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OregonLive.com - Jun. 26 (News Report) - Tucked into a sprawling, 1,200-page climate change bill before Congress today is a tiny paragraph that touches the federal forests covering a quarter of Oregon. It says these lands, that already give us trails to hike and clean water to drink, can provide renewable power for our toasters while helping to replace long gone lumbering jobs. .

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