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RESULTS		Results 276 – 300 of 484
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Planet of the AEP Utility company AEP to pay billions in acid-rain settlement		09 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 6:45 AM on 09 Oct 2007 The utility company American Electric Power has agreed to pay some $4.6 billion to reduce acid-rain-causing emissions from some of its power plants in the U.S. Northeast, as well as $60 million to clean up specific waterways and parks, and $15 million in civil penalties, all to settle a long-running lawsuit brought by the U.S. EPA, nine states, and over a dozen environmental groups in ...
Topics: coal, litigation, news, United States (all these topics)

Somebody up there loves me Rocky rocks against coal	David Roberts	08 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Consider the following: Rocky Anderson, maverick mayor of Salt Lake City, is awesome. The Beatles are awesome. Coal is the enemy of the human race. Consider, further, whether this might be the greatest story you've ever read in your entire life.
Topics: coal, energy, music, Utah (all these topics)

Nice electrical power you got there. Shame if something happened to it. The coal industry's extortion is on increasingly obvious display	David Roberts	05 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Good God. If you want to see the coal industry's bizarre, Möbius strip arguments in all their glory, check out this Reuters article conveying the comments of Brett Harvey, CEO of coal producer Consol Energy. The mind reels. I want to look at some of the individual statements, but what it comes down to is this: Harvey says we can't live without coal -- there's no other way to get the power we need. But coal can't afford to clean itself up. So if we want clean pow ...
Topics: coal, energy (all these topics)

Coal-solar hybrid It doesn't make sense -- and that's the point	Adam Browning	30 Sep 2007	Gristmill
More than a few people were taken in by a guy peddling a coal/solar hybrid system at Solar Power 2007. "But, smokestacks on the roof -- that just doesn't make sense," said a government bureaucrat, who shall remain unnamed pending resolution of my grant proposal. Indeed, it doesn't. As the less credulous might have predicted, it was a marketing spoof by Sharp Solar: This, fight fans, is textbook campaigning in the YouTube era. Come up with a shtick that ...
Topics: coal, electric vehicles, energy, hybrids, solar voltaic power (all these topics)

Coal is the enemy of the human race: New Republic edition Editorial questions the sequestration promise	David Roberts	25 Sep 2007	Gristmill
The New Republic has a fine, fine editorial about coal today. It calls into question whether spending up to $40 billion on the ten-years-hence promise of carbon sequestration in order to save the coal industry from obsolescence is the best investment we could make to fight global warming. The weak link in the argument is here: Nor is it clear that sequestration will be economical: One GAO analysis predicts that electricity from carbon- capturing plants will co ...
Topics: carbon sequestration, coal, energy (all these topics)

A little karate On electricity deregulation	Sean Casten	20 Sep 2007	Gristmill
In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi advises that 'It is good to know karate. It is good not to know karate. It is not good to know a little karate.' With the price caps now coming off in the few states that partially deregulated their electricity grids, there is a rising backlash against competitive markets, with some of that backlash even coming from normally pro-market groups like The Cato Institute. This backlashers generally argue that partial deregulation has taught us th ...
Topics: business, coal, electricity grid, energy (all these topics)

Why coal is the enemy of the human race: Reason no. 836,372 Mercury moves from coal plant to fish dinner as fast as its name implies	JMG	19 Sep 2007	Gristmill
A Scientificblogging post explains that it only takes three years for mercury emitted by coal-fired plants to travel up the food chain into fish that we eat: 'Before this study, no one had directly linked atmospheric deposition (mercury emissions) and mercury in fish,' says study co-author Vincent St. Louis of the University of Alberta. The experiment filled a major gap in scientists' understanding of how mercury moves from the atmosphere through forests, soils, lakes an ...
Topics: coal, energy, fishing, food, mercury, toxics (all these topics)

The Coal Nine Yards Coal industry asks for still more handouts, and Washington lends an ear	Brian Beutler	19 Sep 2007	Muckraker
We're gradually learning how the U.S. government will approach our country's energy needs in the carbon-constrained future -- and if you were envisioning a future free of mining the earth for dirty energy, you should probably check the optimism. Same coal, same coal. Photo: iStockphoto Two important hearings on Capitol Hill earlier this month strongly indicated that we're stuc ...
Topics: carbon sequestration, coal, coal-to-liquid fuel, Muckraker, politics (all these topics)

EPA to Supreme Court: Take a hike! EPA gives permit to new Utah coal plant; Waxman cries foul	Brian Beutler	19 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Given the opportunity last month to adhere to the Supreme Court's findings in the case of Massachusetts vs. EPA, the EPA chose instead to completely ignore the ruling and proceed as if the case had never been heard. It issued a permit to Deseret Power to construct a 110-megawatt coal-fired power unit at an existing power plant in Uintah County, Utah. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, today sent a letter t ...
Topics: coal, energy, litigation, politics, US EPA, Utah (all these topics)

Put the Cure in Mercury Mercury contamination in fish declines when emissions go down		18 Sep 2007	News
Posted at 2:41 PM on 18 Sep 2007 Mercury contamination of waterways and marine life doesn't have to be an ongoing problem -- all we have to do is limit industrial mercury emissions. Easy! After a seven-year experiment in a Canada lake, researchers publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that mercury concentrations in fish would decline relatively quickly if their ecosystem w ...
Topics: coal, fishing, food, health, news, toxics (all these topics)

Tackling climate: Beltway tone-deafness edition On subsidizing 'green' energy R&D	Brian Beutler	17 Sep 2007	Gristmill
In its 'green' issue this week, The New Republic features an excerpt from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger's new book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Their basic point is that the emphasis of the political debate is all wrong. I'm not sure they really understand how things are shaping up, but they're saying that politicians should spend less 'time' talking about regulatory approaches, and more time reiterati ...
Topics: carbon tax, carbon trading, climate, coal, energy, innovation, politics (all these topics)

Ecomagination and coal As long as GE funds coal, its net impact is far from green	David Roberts	17 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Let me pull a few excerpts from a recent WSJ story on the progress of GE's much-touted "ecomagination" campaign: 'I don't want to change the economic flow of the company,' [CEO Jeffrey] Immelt says. So GE continues to sell coal-fired steam turbines and is delving deeper into oil-and-gas production. Meanwhile, its finance unit seeks out coal-related investments including power plants, which are a leading cause of carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. ... ...
Topics: business, climate, coal, energy, greenhouse-gas emissions, greening biz operations (all these topics)

Cuomo arigato! New York attorney general subpoenas energy companies over disclosure of coal-plant risks	David Roberts	17 Sep 2007	Gristmill
A new weapon has been brought to bear in the war on coal, and it's aimed right at the corpulent industry's soft underbelly: risk. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just sent out a round of subpoenas to energy companies. He wants to see internal documents demonstrating that the companies -- AES Corporation, Dominion, Dynegy, Peabody Energy and Xcel Energy -- fully disclosed the financial risks of planned coal-fired power plants to investors. (This is Cuomo's tw ...
Topics: business, coal, energy, politics (all these topics)

The Investor Class Owns the Means of Reduction New York state investigates power companies' emissions on behalf of shareholders		17 Sep 2007	News
Posted at 6:23 AM on 17 Sep 2007 New York state used a new tactic last week to try to prompt coal-fired power plants to clean up their climate changing emissions: concern for shareholders. State attorney general Andrew Cuomo sent letters and subpoenas to five coal-lovin' power companies on Friday requesting internal documents and questioning if investors had been given ...
Topics: climate, coal, New York, news (all these topics)

Black Lung Is the New Black Rates of black lung disease double in a decade		14 Sep 2007	News
Posted at 5:01 PM on 14 Sep 2007 Rates of black lung disease have doubled in the last decade, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The disease, which is caused by inhaling coal dust, now occurs in almost 10 percent of coal miners who work 25 or more years underground, as opposed to about 4 percent a decade ago. Safety standards enacted in 1969 were supposed to prevent black lung altoget ...
Topics: coal, energy, health, mining, news (all these topics)

Big Coal, anti-wind Coal industry insider tapped to kill Cape Wind	Erik Hoffner	11 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Those trying to stop what would be the nation's first offshore wind farm, Cape Wind, have just hired (another!) coal industry insider to lead the charge. Glenn Wattley is the new director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, and as Wendy Williams details in her blog, he's a longtime coal and coal-gasification proponent. She says that this fits with her past reporting: Big Coal is behind many anti-wind efforts. In a news report on Wattley's new role (rich rea ...
Topics: coal, energy, Massachusetts, wind power (all these topics)

Edwards not as green as you thought: When a ban isn't a ban Why Edwards' 'ban' on coal plants does little good against climate change	David Roberts	10 Sep 2007	Gristmill
John Edwards. Photo: kk+ via flickr One of the most meaningful steps the U.S. can take to fight climate change is to forbid construction of new coal plants unless they capture and sequester their carbon emissions. If we allow more dirty coal plants, all our other efforts will be in vain. That's why James Hansen and Al Gore return to the subject so often. Dem presidential candidate Chris Dodd has called for such a policy in blunt language: "The Do ...
Topics: carbon sequestration, coal, elections, energy, John Edwards, politics, presidential race 08 (all these topics)

Edwards and 'compatibility' John Edwards would not require that new coal plants sequester their CO2 emissions	David Roberts	10 Sep 2007	Gristmill
There was some question in this thread about what exactly John Edwards means when he says he would "require that all new coal-fired plants be built with the required technology to capture their carbon dioxide emissions." Would he require that new coal plants sequester their emissions, or merely that they be built in such a way that they could sequester their emissions at some point in the future? I called the Edwards campaign today. The answer is the latt ...
Topics: carbon sequestration, coal, elections, energy, John Edwards, presidential race 08 (all these topics)

CTL follies Coal-to-liquid is a dead end if there's a price on CO2	Joseph Romm	09 Sep 2007	Gristmill
One final post on this week's liquid coal hearing. Forbes wrote up the hearing and got my bluntest quote: 'Coal-to-liquid is just a dead end, from a climate perspective,' added Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. 'Liquid coal will not have a future in this country, no matter how much money Congress squanders on it.' Well, I guess 'liberal-leaning' is better than 'liberal.' Why is liquid coal a dead end? B ...
Topics: coal, coal-to-liquid fuel, energy (all these topics)

Christians against coal mining Rev. Allen Johnson calls on churches to condemn mountaintop-removal mining	Grist	08 Sep 2007	Gristmill
This is a guest post from Rev. Allen Johnson, whom we interviewed last year as part of our God & the Environment series. Johnson heads Christians for the Mountains, a group fighting to protect the Appalachians from mountaintop-removal mining. This post is reprinted with permission from the Moyers Blog. ----- On August 22, The New York Times published an article that began, 'The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday [August 24] that would ens ...
Topics: coal, coal-to-liquid fuel, mining, politics, religion and spirituality, West Virginia (all these topics)

Turns out toxic heavy metals are, um, toxic EPA determines coal waste raises cancer risk	David Roberts	07 Sep 2007	Gristmill
The waste from burning coal -- coal combustion products, or CCPs, like coal ash and boiler slag -- contains toxic heavy metals like mercury and cadmium. But don't worry, the coal industry says that the concentrations aren't high enough to do anyone harm. Taking the coal industry's word for it, the U.S. EPA decided in 1993 and again in 2000 not to regulate CCPs as hazardous waste. As a consequence, the coal industry isn't all that careful with CCPs. Using a composite l ...
Topics: coal, energy, toxics, US EPA (all these topics)

Coal is the enemy of the human race: Architecture2030 edition New full-page ad makes the case against coal	David Roberts	07 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Ah, this kicks ass! The group Architecture2030 is putting a full-page ad in the next issue of the New Yorker. You can download the PDF here. I've reprinted the text below: ----- GLOBAL WARMING Think You're Making a Difference? Think Again. There are 151 new conventional coal-fired power plants in various stages of development in the US today. HOME DEPOT Home Depot is funding the planting of 300,000 trees in cities across the US to help absorb carbon ...
Topics: climate, coal, energy (all these topics)

Global warming: An inconvenient pain in the ass After delaying action against climate change, Big Coal is now scheming to cash in	Brian Beutler	06 Sep 2007	Gristmill
For readers out there who understand the climate crisis well (I assume basically all of you), a lot of this will be recap, but today's hearing underscored how desperate the situation really is and how urgently it needs to be addressed. That urgency is a source, at least to me, of tremendous frustration. To a great extent, we've reached this point precisely because energy industries and their political patrons spent years blocking action, rejecting science, and rhet ...
Topics: climate, coal, energy, politics (all these topics)

Yup. Stuck with coal. The word from today's hearing of Markey's climate committee	Brian Beutler	06 Sep 2007	Gristmill
As I suggested earlier, the crux of today's hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change was to suggest that carbon capture and storage is necessary quickly, via enormous government subsidies, or else we're screwed. Remember, this is Ed Markey's committee. He's the guy who's supposed to advise Congress about upcoming climate-change legislation, and, for all intents and purposes, he's an ally to Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the envi ...
Topics: climate, coal, Ed Markey, energy, politics (all these topics)

Collision course The coal industry's rush to build new plants is bumping up against reality	David Roberts	06 Sep 2007	Gristmill
One thing the coal industry seems to get, but that isn't yet common public knowledge, is how fragile it is. It's a filthy relic of the 19th century and a rational society with a free and open energy market would have ditched it already. It has survived almost purely based on inertia -- its stranglehold on the political process and the persistence of various myths (like, say, the myth that it can be cheap and clean, or the myth that we can't meet our needs with renewabl ...
Topics: coal, energy (all these topics)

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