Energy

A new crop is ready to sprout on Illinois farms, with gleaming solar panels supplanting rows of corn and soybeans. Drawn by new state requirements and incentives, renewable energy developers are staking out turf on the rural fringes of the Chicago area and beyond, looking to build dozens of solar farms to feed the electric grids of Commonwealth Edison and other utilities. It’s a potential sea change in the Illinois energy landscape that proponents say is long overdue and will provide customers with a green power alternative. [node:read-more:link]

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and House lawmakers upped the pressure on President Trump to make a decision soon on a way to save oil refineries from the costs of meeting the Environmental Protection Agency's ethanol mandate. “The president can solve this with the stroke of a pen,” the Texas Republican said Thursday afternoon, joined by refinery workers and the steelworkers union. [node:read-more:link]

Wind turbines have cropped up like dandelions across large areas of the United States, and thousands more are coming. The US Department of Energy projects that we’ll have 404 gigawatts of wind energy capacity across the country by 2050, up from 89 GW today. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration wants to ease restrictions on oil and gas leasing and other activities across a huge swath of the American West that were put in place to protect an imperiled bird. The move involves conservation plans for greater sage grouse approved in 2015 under former President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has vowed to increase U.S. [node:read-more:link]

The future of Wyoming coal looks bleak: In late March, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that demand will stay flat for several decades. Last year, companies withdrew applications for 901 million tons of coal in the Powder River Basin. In December, Contura Energy sold two Powder River Basin mines for just $21 million, the amount of taxes it owes the state. And this winter, power-plant owners in Colstrip, facing eventual plant closure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promised the coal-dependent town $13 million to help its economy transition beyond coal. [node:read-more:link]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed an "international priorities" page from its website in December, according to a report released this week by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI). [node:read-more:link]

So far we have let China dominate renewable energy industries. Why not catch up and take the lead, like we did in the space race? China is well on its way to becoming the renewable energy superpower of the future. We can still come from behind and take the lead — if you make it a national priority. Since the 2015 Paris Accord, the whole world has been moving as quickly as possible toward a clean energy future. [node:read-more:link]

Although President Donald Trump made clear on Thursday his support for granting a waiver to allow year-round sales of E15, the EPA told DTN on Friday the agency hasn't yet made a decision on E15. E15 fuel is a blend of 15% ethanol and 85% of gasoline. At a White House meeting Thursday focusing on agriculture and trade, Trump said his administration will approve E15. [node:read-more:link]

Political posturing from a small segment of the petroleum industry has the Trump administration considering damaging changes to our most successful American energy policies that we’ve seen in decades: the renewable fuel standard. The RFS was passed by a bipartisan Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush more than a decade ago, provides an avenue for domestic biofuels producers to gain access to the U.S. transportation fuels market, which has been monopolized by the petroleum industry for more than a century. The results of the program have been impressive. [node:read-more:link]

The Trump administration will delay any moves to reform the nation’s biofuel policy for about three months, according to three sources briefed on the matter - a decision one of the sources said was meant to shield farmers worried about a potential trade war with China. The decision comes after President Donald Trump failed to broker a deal between Big Oil and Big Corn during meetings over months about the future of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard - a law broadly supported in the U.S. heartland that requires oil refiners to add biofuels like ethanol to the nation’s gasoline. [node:read-more:link]