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Category: Renewable energy/fossil fuels

A biomass power plant reignites concerns over clean energy and environmental justice

A biomass power plant reignites concerns over clean energy and environmental justice

Inside Climate News reports: A North Carolina power plant that generates electricity from poultry waste and wood chips has touched off a controversy over an operating permit that, if granted, would imperil public health and wellbeing, residents and environmental advocates in the surrounding community say. Since it started operating in Robeson County in 2015, North Carolina Renewable Power’s South Lumberton plant has repeatedly exceeded allowable emissions for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, known as PM2.5, and methane–a…

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As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

Inside Climate News reports: In the six weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict has not only sent energy prices soaring, but has disrupted food production, pushing costs upward and stoking fears of global food shortages. The United Nations has warned of surging food insecurity in countries that depend on wheat from Ukraine, a critical and major breadbasket. Many of them were already teetering on the edge of hunger before the crisis. As these effects of the conflict ripple across…

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Will Russia’s war against Ukraine spur Europe to move on green energy?

Will Russia’s war against Ukraine spur Europe to move on green energy?

Paul Hockenos writes: Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is sparking a wide-ranging revamping of energy policy in Europe with a bold new objective: to wean the continent off Russian gas — as rapidly and comprehensively as possible — and accelerate Europe’s green energy transition. In late-night sessions, Europe’s leaders have been drafting a spectrum of crisis strategies not only to pivot to other natural gas suppliers — as the United States, which imports much less gas and oil…

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U.S. oil industry uses Ukraine invasion to push for more drilling at home

U.S. oil industry uses Ukraine invasion to push for more drilling at home

The New York Times reports: Russian troops hadn’t yet begun their full-on assault on Ukraine late Wednesday when the rallying cry came from the American oil and gas industry. “As crisis looms in Ukraine, U.S. energy leadership is more important than ever,” the American Petroleum Institute, the powerful industry lobby group, wrote on Twitter with a photo that read: “Let’s unleash American energy. Protect our energy security.” The crux of the industry’s argument is that any effort to restrain drilling…

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How we can defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats

How we can defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats

Bill McKibben writes: The pictures this morning of Russian tanks rolling across the Ukrainian countryside seemed both surreal – a flashback to a Europe that we’ve seen only in newsreels – and inevitable. It’s been clear for years that Vladimir Putin was both evil and driven and that eventually we might come to a moment like this. One of the worst parts of facing today’s reality is our impotence in its face. Yes, America is imposing sanctions, and yes, that…

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Texas is America’s clean energy leader, almost in spite of itself

Texas is America’s clean energy leader, almost in spite of itself

Inside Climate News reports: In the race to build renewable energy projects in 2021, Texas lapped the competition. The state had 7,352 megawatts of new wind, solar and energy storage projects come online during the year, according to a report issued this week by the American Clean Power Association, a trade group. The runner-up, California, brought 2,697 megawatts online. But what got my attention wasn’t Texas’ dominance in 2021. It was that Texas also is the leader when ranking the…

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U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

Reuters reports: Corn-based ethanol, which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps, is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline, according to a study published Monday. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts previous research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showing ethanol and other biofuels to be relatively green. President Joe Biden’s administration is reviewing policies on biofuels as part…

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Wood burners emit more particle pollution than traffic, UK data shows

Wood burners emit more particle pollution than traffic, UK data shows

The Guardian reports: Wood burning in homes produces more small particle pollution than all road traffic in the UK, according to revised government data. The new data significantly cuts the estimated proportion of small particle pollution that comes from wood burners from 38% to 17%. But wood burning pollution remains a “major contributor” to particle pollution, another government report said. Road transport is responsible for 13% of particle pollution. The data shows tiny particle pollution, called PM2.5, produced by wood…

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Reinventing the electric grid is crucial for solving the climate crisis

Reinventing the electric grid is crucial for solving the climate crisis

Integrating solar panels with farming can provide partial shade for plants. Werner Slocum/NREL By Charles F. Kutscher, University of Colorado Boulder and Jeffrey Logan, University of Colorado Boulder In the summer of 1988, scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was dangerously warming the planet. Scientific meetings were held, voluminous reports were written, and national pledges were made, but because fossil fuels were comparatively cheap, little concrete action was taken to reduce carbon emissions….

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Coming soon to this coal county in Kentucky: Solar, in a big way

Coming soon to this coal county in Kentucky: Solar, in a big way

The New York Times reports: For a mountain that’s had its top blown off, the old Martiki coal mine is looking especially winsome these days. With its vast stretches of emerald grass dotted with hay bales and ringed with blue-tinged peaks, and the wild horses and cattle that roam there, it looks less like a shuttered strip mine and more like an ad for organic milk. The mountain is poised for another transformation. Hundreds of acres are set to be…

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Will nuclear fusion ever power the world?

Will nuclear fusion ever power the world?

Steffi Diem tells Gizmodo: If funding for fusion energy development continues to increase, then yes, fusion will power the world in the future. Since the 1990s, funding for fusion research in the United States has been for the science of fusion, not for the development of an energy source. The rest of the world has a wide portfolio of fusion research as well, and we are all racing to harness the power of fusion. Major recent advances in technology and…

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Hopes grow that nuclear fusion is finally for real and could help address climate change

Hopes grow that nuclear fusion is finally for real and could help address climate change

The Boston Globe reports: It’s been compared to everything from a holy grail to fool’s gold: the ultimate solution to clean, readily available energy or an expensive delusion diverting scarce money and brainpower from the urgent needs of rapidly addressing climate change. For decades, scientists have been trying to harness the energy that powers stars, a complex, atomic-level process known as nuclear fusion, which requires heating a plasma fuel to more than 100 million degrees Celsius and finding a way…

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How the U.S. lost ground to China in the contest for clean energy

How the U.S. lost ground to China in the contest for clean energy

The New York Times reports: Tom Perriello saw it coming but could do nothing to stop it. André Kapanga too. Despite urgent emails, phone calls and personal pleas, they watched helplessly as a company backed by the Chinese government took ownership from the Americans of one of the world’s largest cobalt mines. It was 2016, and a deal had been struck by the Arizona-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to sell the site, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which now…

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An international power struggle over cobalt rattles the clean energy revolution

An international power struggle over cobalt rattles the clean energy revolution

The New York Times reports from Kisanfu, Democratic Republic of Congo: Just up a red dirt road, across an expanse of tall, dew-soaked weeds, bulldozers are hollowing out a yawning new canyon that is central to the world’s urgent race against global warming. For more than a decade, the vast expanse of untouched land was controlled by an American company. Now a Chinese mining conglomerate has bought it, and is racing to retrieve its buried treasure: millions of tons of…

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Biden administration plans wind farms along nearly the entire U.S. coastline

Biden administration plans wind farms along nearly the entire U.S. coastline

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration announced on Wednesday a plan to develop large-scale wind farms along nearly the entire coastline of the United States, the first long-term strategy from the government to produce electricity from offshore turbines. Speaking at a wind power industry conference in Boston, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that her agency will begin to identify, demarcate and hope to eventually lease federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine and off the…

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Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Fred Pearce writes: We know how to decarbonize energy production with renewable fuels and land transportation with electric vehicles. Blueprints for greening shipping and aircraft are being drawn up. But what about the big industrial processes? They look set to become decarbonization holdouts — the last and hardest CO2 emissions that we must eliminate if we are to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. In particular, how are we to green the three biggest globally-vital heavy industries: steel, cement, and ammonia,…

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