Energy

[This is the second article in a four-part series. Read part one, read part three, read part four.] In the wake of what may be the third largest coal ash spill in U.S. history, Waterkeeper Alliance deployed a disaster response team to assess the damage and monitor remediation efforts by Duke Energy and the of […]

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released the result of its investigation into coal leasing practices at the Bureau of Land Management, which confirmed earlier reports that coal companies have taken advantage of a lax bidding process for leasing coal on publicly owned lands, resulting in nearly $30 billion in loss for U.S. taxpayers. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) echoed […]

The dirty secret in President Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy policy was quietly overlooked in his State of the Union address. Three weeks after global media attention on the West Virginia coal-chemical disaster, the most important line of information still remains buried in an AP report: … [A] review of federal environmental enforcement records shows that nearly three-quarters of the […]

[This is the first article in a four-part series. Read part two, read part three, read part four.] Yesterday afternoon, Duke Energy reported that it spilled between 50,000 to 82,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River near Eden, NC. To put the volume in perspective, the spill is the equivalent of 413 to […]

With a shift of nearly two billion dollars away from fossil fuels, the divestment campaign has moved into new territory. Last week, seventeen of the world’s largest philanthropic foundations announced commitments to pull their money out of fossil fuel companies and reinvest it in the clean energy economy. The newly formed Divest-Invest coalition urges other organizations to take […]

A mind-boggling sum of about $800 for each person on the planet is invested into fossil fuel companies through the global capital markets alone. That’s roughly 10 percent of the total capital invested in listed companies. The amount of money invested into the 200 biggest fossil fuel companies through financial markets is estimated at 5.5 trillion dollars. […]

Late yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to finalize first-ever federal regulations for the disposal of coal ash by Dec.19, 2014, according to a settlement in a lawsuit brought by environmental and public health groups and a Native American tribe. The settlement does not dictate the content of the final regulation, but […]

Yesterday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the Department of the Interior violated the law when it opened almost 30 million acres of the outer continental shelf in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska to oil and gas drilling. Icebergs in the high Arctic. Photo credit: Wikimedia The court concluded the Department’s estimate […]