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Decarbonization ambitions ignite debate over mining, permitting
The decarbonized, electrified future envisioned by the Biden administration, state governments, automakers, utility companies and corporate sustainability goals depends to a huge degree on minerals and metals. Lots more lithium will be needed for car and truck batteries, as well as the big banks of batteries that are increasingly popping onto the electric grid to balance the […]
With decarbonization, advocates see a bright future for nuclear after decades of dormancy
IDAHO FALLS, Id. — At the sprawling array of laboratories and test facilities in the southeastern Idaho desert where the U.S. nuclear power industry was born more than 70 years ago, past, present and future are converging.\ Not far from where the first reactor to ever produce usable electricity made history in 1951, Idaho National […]
Here’s where renewable power is increasing (and where it’s not)
Despite supply-chain problems amid the lingering effects of the pandemic, 2022 saw major increases in solar and wind power in the United States, though that growth varied by state, according to a report released last month by a nonprofit focused on climate change. Nationally, electricity generated from solar and wind grew 16% from 2021, with […]
After series of winter storms, federal regulators approve new standards for power plants
Two years after Winter Storm Uri, which caused a massive power failure in Texas that caused more than 200 deaths, and just two months after another storm, Elliott, forced blackouts in parts of the South, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved new extreme cold reliability standards for power plants. However, the vote last week […]
Affordable, reliable and sustainable: report compares utility performance
A nationwide comparison of electric utility performance by an Illinois consumer advocacy group found that customers in states that are heavily reliant on fuel oil and natural gas, as in the Northeast and South, tend to pay more than those with larger amounts of carbon-free generation, among other findings. The report by the Illinois-based Citizens […]
Environmental enforcement has fallen off under Biden, report says
Federal environmental enforcement, as measured by Environmental Protection Agency civil cases closed against polluters, hit a two-decade low in 2022, per a report released by a national environmental group that blames budget cuts, staff shortages and the U.S. Senate’s failure to confirm key leaders. The Environmental Integrity Project said the 72 civil enforcement cases closed […]
After substation shooting, federal regulator orders review of security standards
Less than two weeks after gunfire damaged two Duke Energy substations in Moore County, N.C., knocking out power to about 45,000 people, federal regulators ordered a review of security standards at electric transmission facilities and control centers. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday ordered the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which sets and […]
Scientists announce a fusion breakthrough with big implications for clean energy
Scientists at a U.S. national laboratory announced Tuesday that they achieved fusion ignition, a breakthrough decades in the making that could have major implications for clean energy. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco said that on Dec. 5, for the first time anywhere in the world, they managed to produce more […]
As utilities spend billions on transmission, support builds for independent monitoring
An aging electric grid, fossil fuel power plant retirements and a massive renewable electricity buildout are all contributing to a boom in transmission and distribution wire projects by electric utilities across the country. In 2020, investor-owned electric utilities spent $25 billion on transmission, up from $23.7 billion in 2019, figures that the Edison Electric Institute, […]
Amid a major federal investment in electric cars, it’s time for states to step up, advocates say
For years, electric vehicles posed something of a chicken-and-egg problem. Mass adoption, seen as critical to cutting the largest single source of U.S. carbon emissions, couldn’t happen until the infrastructure to allow drivers to recharge wherever they were heading was in place. And those charging stations weren’t coming until more drivers switched to plug-in electric […]
Coal plant operators shirking responsibilities on ash cleanup, report contends
In the wake of major coal ash spills from power plant containment ponds in Tennessee and into the Dan River along the North Carolina and Virginia border, the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 laid out the first federal rules for managing the ash, one of the nation’s largest waste streams, and the toxins it […]
Amid a massive American clean energy shift, grid operators play catch-up.
For the better part of the past century, the American electric power system evolved around large, mostly fossil fuel power plants delivering electricity to residences, businesses and industry through a network of transmission and distribution wires that collectively came to be called the electric grid. But as the threat of climate change driven by carbon […]