California report links emissions reductions to economic growth

Tesla PowerpacksA new report on pollution, economic growth, and renewable energy in California sheds new light on the link between emissions regulations and economic growth ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco next month. The report released Thursday shows that even as the state implemented stricter emissions standards than other states and...

Scientists find affordable way to recapture CO2 and burn it

ForestScientists at Harvard have developed a new method of scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere, and turning it into hydrocarbon fuels that could be burned in airplanes or even cars. The process has been demonstrated at a small scale and combines common technologies from the pulp and petroleum industries to capture carbon and hydrogenate it back into...

Pruitt’s EPA emission rollback reasoning may well fail in court

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt  [photo from 2014]Despite the sturm und drang around the announcement by embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt that he will relax emission limits for 2022 through 2025 vehicles, not much will happen immediately. His determination last week that the Obama administration was "incorrect" and that the limits on those vehicles weren't needed kicks off a lengthy process of...

Pruitt’s EPA decision: 38-page intention vs 1,217 pages of analysis

Flooded CarWhile the name of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is often preceded by "embattled" these days, his agency is now on record as rejecting its own recommendation of just 16 months ago. It concluded in July 2016 that the auto industry had handily met lower carbon-emission limits from 2012 through 2017—at lower cost and with more conventional...

EPA staffers told how to downplay climate change in leaked memo

Flooded car in parking lot. Photo via Flickr user waitscm/CC2.0EPA administrator Scott Pruitt would be controversial even if he hadn't flown to Morocco in December (first-class, on the taxpayer dime) to lobby the country on the benefits of liquified natural gas while living in a condo owned by a lobbyist for the country's largest LNG exporter. He is likely the first EPA head to axe scientists from the...