Ohio bill would grant permanent subsidies to coal-fired power plants

Coal, by Flicker user oatsy40 (Used Under CC License)It's now widely acknowledged that the energy and electricity-generation landscape is changing rapidly. The U.S. has vastly increased its oil and gas production, driving down prices of fossil fuels globally. At the same time, ever-cheaper renewable energy—not only solar, but surprisingly fast-growing wind generation—is now...

Electric cars cleaner than any gas-only car for 97 percent of U.S. drivers

Electric-car wells-to-wheels emission equivalencies in MPG, May 2017 [Union of Concerned Scientists]Electric cars have no tailpipe emissions when running. But unless they're charged entirely on renewable energy—still statistically unlikely today—there are emissions associated with generating the electricity used to charge their batteries. For several years now, rigorous "wells-to-wheels" analyses of the carbon-dioxide emissions...

Lots of ways to get $10K off 2017 Nissan Leaf electric car by end of June

2017 Nissan Leaf  The 2017 Nissan Leaf might well be the hottest electric car deal on the market right now, with a slew of potential discounts. Nissan is working with numerous partners to provide $10,000 off a 2017 Leaf lease, which adds to the $7,500 federal income-tax credit, giving a total of $17,500 in incentives. Among the partners offering the $10,000...

Soaring growth of solar power demonstrated in one chart

Photovoltaic solar power field at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TennesseeSometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words. In the case of the rapidly rising rate of solar generation for electricity, numerous forecasts by internationally respected bodies have proven woefully conservative. The image in the tweet below, created by Auke Hoestra at the Technical University of Eindhoven, in The Netherlands, shows it...

California utility SCE offers $450 rebate for new and used electric cars

2015 Nissan Leaf with CHAdeMO fast-charging cable plugged in  [photo John Briggs]California already offers generous incentives to get consumers into electric vehicles, but now the electric utility Southern California Edison has joined in. SCE has announced what it calls the Clean Fuel Rewards Program to offer a $450 purchase rebate for battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners. The utility company isn't limiting the...

Did EPA head ask coal lobby to fight Paris climate pact? Claim disputed

Coal, by Flicker user oatsy40 (Used Under CC License)The Trump administration is either having a robust internal debate on its climate positions or floundering incoherently as various interests vie for the president's attention. Its intentions for the Paris Climate Agreement that the U.S. signed last year remain entirely unclear. On Monday, Trump's EPA administrator Scott Pruitt reportedly asked a...

The day without coal: Britain’s first one since 1882

Coal, by Flicker user oatsy40 (Used Under CC License)The Industrial Revolution that started around 1750 in England was powered largely by coal. With Watt's invention of the steam engine and the emergence of railways in the mid-nineteenth century, the carbon-dense fuel was central to the change from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. Last Friday, however, marked a watershed moment for...

Trump DoE to critique renewables against coal for grid reliability

wind farmIt is widely accepted in the energy industry that U.S. coal production will fall as a percentage of the total electric grid mix. That has little to do with its high carbon footprint per kilowatt-hour generated; it is largely due to far greater supplies of much cheaper fracked natural gas. It is also widely accepted that renewable energy sources...