The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected a Trump administration proposal to reward coal and nuclear power plants for storing fuel on-site, as a way to make the power system more reliable.
Skimming oil in the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon spill, May 29, 2010.
NOAA
Donald Boesch, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
A scientist who served on a national commission to review the 2010 BP oil spill explains why Trump administration efforts to loosen offshore drilling regulation pose major risks for minor payoffs.
Making sense of the Department of Energy’s plan.
Shutterstock.com
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission normally works in obscurity, but is in the spotlight as it considers a proposal to support coal and nuclear power plants that are having trouble competing.
Transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases by sector. Converting the U.S. fleet to cleaner electric vehicles would likely take decades.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
What if the world really got serious about meeting global climate goals? Doing the math on current emissions and the pace of energy transitions shows how quickly fossil fuels need to be phased out.
Refugee women from Darfur, Sudan return to their camp in eastern Chad with wood for their households in 2011.
European Commission DG ECHO
With better access to energy, women in developing nations could spend more time working or in school. But Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s claim that fossil fuels improve women’s lives misses the mark.
Grid operators set the prices for energy markets and are structured to take the lowest prices – a disadvantage for coal and nuclear power.
Two moves by the Trump administration signal a dramatic shift in energy policy to favor coal and nuclear, but markets forces and legal challenges mean changes could take years.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is an unabashed ally of the fossil fuels – industry his agency is supposed to regulate.
AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar
The Trump administration is committed to deregulating industry, as it’s done with the EPA Clean Power Plan. But a historian shows how regulations have actually benefited both industry and consumers.
TVA Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, site of a 1.1 billion gallon spill of coal ash slurry in 2008, photographed on March 28, 2012.
Appalachian Voices
Rural development experts say the best way to help coal communities by is investing in people, infrastructure and a clean environment. Instead, President Trump’s budget cuts programs in these areas.
Demolishing the coal-fired R.E. Burger Power Station in Shadyside, Ohio, July 29, 2016.
PROFirstEnergy Corp.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry has proposed to reward coal plants for stockpiling fuel onsite – allegedly making the power system more reliable. Two economists give this idea a failing grade.
Public lands along the south fork of the Snake River in southeastern Idaho.
BLM
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke calls himself “a Teddy Roosevelt guy,” but supports many actions that critics call anti-conservation, such as shrinking national monuments and fast-tracking energy projects.
Coal power has long been a mainstay of the electricity system but has lost share as natural gas prices have gone down.
John Fowler
The Department of Energy’s review of the electricity grid finds natural gas, rather than renewables, has hurt coal and nuclear power. But that’s only half the story of the changes underway.
This 1899 drawing depicts Uncle Sam disciplining his newly acquired pupils/possessions, including Puerto Rico, following the Treaty of Paris.
Library of Congress
In Puerto Rico the Trump administration’s ‘energy dominance’ policy echoes colonial practices by fast-forwarding fossil fuel projects over community resistance.
Having an antagonistic debate over climate change will not shed any more light on the fundamentals of climate science.
Ivica Drusany/Shutterstock.com
Why assembling two teams to debate climate change is all about political spectacle and sowing doubt – and has nothing to do with actual climate science.
After spending $9 billion on a nuclear power plant construction in South Carolina, project developers have pulled the plug.
SCE&G
Nuclear power plants don’t just pump out steady, carbon-free electricity; they also help produce the people the US needs for nuclear weapons inspections.
The first U.S. offshore wind farm, near Block Island, Rhode Island, started delivering commercial electricity in December 2016.
AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
Jennifer Morris, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
When utilities plan investments, they think decades ahead. A recent study shows why power companies should be spending more on renewables despite the Trump administration’s tilt toward fossil fuels.
The surge in U.S. oil and natural gas production has transformed the energy picture in the country, but the influence is muted globally.
Pixabay
How fast can the US transition to clean energy and with what energy sources? Here’s why an impassioned debate among energy wonks matters to the rest of us.
A May Day protest in San Francisco. The state is at odds with the Trump administration on a number of policies, notably immigration and environment.
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
Defiant against Trump’s policies on immigration and environment, California finds itself defending its way of life – the California Dream itself.
There’s strong support for wind power, which aids in addressing climate change, in Kansas and other red states for economic reasons.
AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
The Trump administration has already sought to reverse several Obama-era climate change policies. Pro-environment people should now focus on threats to state climate actions.
On June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the United States will leave the Paris climate accord.
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
A panel of academics and scientists explain the damages to the Earth, the economy and US moral standing in the world by Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris climate accord.