In the 2010s, U.S. companies, eager to meet Asia’s growing demand for coal with exports from Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin, proposed six coal terminals in the Northwest. One in Longview, Washington, would ship about 44 million metric tons per year. Anti-fossil-fuel activists protested, and five of the proposals were dropped.
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In what is regarded as an unusual step, a group of 13 young people have joined together to become court sanctioned intervenors as they fight a proposed Enbridge Energy pipeline through northern Minnesota. Intervenors are sanctioned by the state Public Utilities Commission to represent parties in contested cases. They are generally lawyers and experts hired by energy firms, clean energy organizations, environmental groups, governmental agencies and an occasional citizen or two. [node:read-more:link]
While not set in stone, the odds of Spencer County becoming home to the state’s largest solar project are about as good as they can be following a productive meeting between the county council and representatives from Orion Renewable Energy Group. The project, operating under the name Troy Solar LLC, would see a massive investment in solar panels on 800 acres of leased farmland between the communities of Troy and New Boston along Indiana 545. At a Sept. [node:read-more:link]
Every two years, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), America’s official source for energy statistics, issues scenarios about how much solar, wind and conventional energy the future holds for the US. Every two years, since the mid-1990s, the EIA is wrong. Last year, it was spectacularly wrong. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Statista recently teamed up to analyze the EIA’s predictions for energy usage and production. It found that the EIA’s ten-year estimates between 2006 to 2016 systematically understated the share of wind, solar and gas. [node:read-more:link]
Amazon Wind Farm Texas would add over 1 million megawatt hours (MWh) of clean energy to the grid annually. The facility, which is located in Scurry County, has over 100 turbines, each standing more than 300-feet tall and with a rotor diameter over double the wingspan of a Boeing 787.Amazon said the wind farm was built, owned and operated by Lincoln Clean Energy, which develops wind and solar projects in the U.S. Amazon has entered into a long-term agreement to purchase 90 percent of the facility's output. [node:read-more:link]
An oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last week may be the largest in the U.S. since the 2010 blowout at BP Plc’s Macondo well that sank the Deepwater Horizon rig and killed 11 people. LLOG Exploration Co. reported 7,950 to 9,350 barrels of oil were released Oct. 11 to Oct. 12 from subsea infrastructure about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of Venice, Louisiana [node:read-more:link]
Producing economically viable biofuels from biomass other than corn, however, is more complicated. Many biofuels researchers, including those at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) based at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, are now focused on making biofuels from low-input crops such as switchgrass and poplar. [node:read-more:link]
The Illinois Commerce Commission has launched an 18-month study to explore the use of emerging technologies to improve the state's electric grid. The "NextGrid: Illinois' Utility of the Future" study is the collaborative effort of the ICC, Ameren Illinois, ComEd, and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois, the Herald-Whig reported.It's a "consumer-focused collaborative study to transform Illinois' energy landscape and economy," said ICC Chairman Brien J. Sheahan. [node:read-more:link]
Wind energy is expected to overtake coal in Texas after Friday's news that two large coal-fired power plants are set to close in the next year. The utility firm Luminant announced that it would close the Sandow Power Plant and the Big Brown Power Plant in early 2018. [node:read-more:link]
President Donald Trump intervened personally with the Environmental Protection Agency amid pressure from Republicans in the politically important state of Iowa who worried the agency was poised to weaken biofuel quotas, three people familiar with the discussions said. [node:read-more:link]
