Nearly 5 million electricity customers across the United States lost power over the weekend as extreme weather, including frigid temperatures and ice storms, drove up demand and shut down electricity generation. The widespread outages underscore the vulnerability of the power grid to extreme weather events made more frequent, powerful, and unpredictable by climate change. “I […]
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler acted Monday to lock in status quo industrial soot pollution limits for another five years, disregarding the emerging scientific link between air pollution and numerous health harms, including increased COVID-19 death rates. Ultrafine industrial soot, known as PM2.5, is especially harmful to human […]
The Australian state of Victoria will build the largest battery in the Southern Hemisphere to assist in its planned transition to renewable energy. Victoria has committed to sourcing 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, The Age reported. The new lithium-ion battery will have a capacity of 300 megawatts and provide 85 […]
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan will become country carbon neutral by 2050, Bloomberg reported. As the world’s third-largest economy, this will require a “fundamental shift” away from coal, The Washington Post reported. Suga replaced former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month, after he resigned due to health issues. This was Suga’s first […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a rule change on Friday that will allow some coal power plants to ignore a court order to clean up coal ash ponds, which leech toxic materials into soil and groundwater. The rule change will allow some coal ash ponds to stay open for years while others that […]
By Hao Tan, Elizabeth Thurbon, John Mathews, Sung-Young Kim China’s President Xi Jinping surprised the global community recently by committing his country to net-zero emissions by 2060. Prior to this announcement, the prospect of becoming “carbon neutral” barely rated a mention in China’s national policies. China currently accounts for about 28% of global carbon emissions […]
By Oliver Milman Art Sullivan is considered something of a political heretic by other coal miners in south-western Pennsylvania, where a wave of support for Donald Trump based upon his flamboyant promises of a resurgence in coal helped propel the Republican to the U.S. presidency. “Many of my coal miner friends voted for him,” said […]
By Jo Harper Only 10% of global energy utility companies are expanding their renewable energy capacity at a faster rate than their gas or coal-fired capacity. That is the main finding of a study by Galina Alova from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. The study, published in […]
The Trump administration announced that it would roll back a rule from 2015 that was put in place to limit the amount of toxic chemicals that are in the wastewater of coal plants, according to The Washington Post. The rule insisted that coal plants invest in newer technologies to treat their wastewater so toxic heavy […]