Energy

To understand what makes Burlington unlike almost any other city in America when it comes to the power it consumes, it helps to look inside the train that rolls into town every day. The 24 freight cars that pull up to the city’s power plant aren’t packed with Appalachian coal or Canadian fuel oil but wood. Each day 1,800 tons of pine and timber slash, sustainably harvested within a 60-mile radius and ground into wood chips, is fed into the roaring furnaces of the McNeil Generating Station, pumping out nearly half of the city’s electricity needs. [node:read-more:link]

Michigan and Minnesota are exemplar Midwest states when it comes to state-level policy pushing for clean energy development, according to a recent report from the Georgetown Climate Center.  Michigan is credited largely for its commitment to energy efficiency, which has been emphasized by Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration as state lawmakers craft sweeping energy policy reform. [node:read-more:link]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is speeding up Canada’s planned elimination of traditional coal-fired power plants, doubling down on green pledges as its top trading partner moves in the opposite direction. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said Monday the country would phase out traditional coal power by 2030, an acceleration of existing measures that the government says affects four facilities in Canada not already facing retrofit or shutdown by then. They include two facilities in Nova Scotia-owned Nova Scotia Power, an Emera Inc. [node:read-more:link]

When President-elect Donald J. Trump met with the British politician Nigel Farage in recent days, he encouraged Mr. Farage and his entourage to oppose the kind of offshore wind farms that Mr. Trump believes will mar the pristine view from one of his two Scottish golf courses, according to one person present. The meeting, held shortly after the presidential election, raises new questions about Mr. [node:read-more:link]

For decades, marine chemists have faced an elusive paradox. The surface waters of the world's oceans are supersaturated with the greenhouse gas methane, yet most species of microbes that can generate the gas can't survive in oxygen-rich surface waters. So where exactly does all the methane come from? This longstanding riddle, known as the "marine methane paradox," may have finally been cracked, thanks to a new study. [node:read-more:link]

Lab studies on basalt have shown that the rock, which formed from lava millions of years ago and is found throughout the world, can rapidly convert CO2 into stable carbonate minerals. This evidence suggests that if CO2could be locked into this solid form, it would be stowed away for good, unable to escape into the atmosphere. But what happens in the lab doesn't always reflect what happens in the field. One field project in Iceland injected CO2 pre-dissolved in water into a basalt formation, where it was successfully stored. [node:read-more:link]

A Trump administration and new leadership of the Senate’s environment committee may breathe new life into efforts to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s renewable fuel standard, lawmakers and advocates say.  House members are continuing to build momentum around bipartisan legislation (H.R. 5180) to limit EPA ethanol requirements in total transportation fuel at 9.7 percent.Opponents of the mandate also are happy about the likely selection of Sen. [node:read-more:link]

The fight over the federal ethanol mandate that has pitted corn farmers and oil refineries against one another is not taking a break now Donald Trump is heading to the White House.  Executives from BP Fuels and Marathon Petroleum were in Washington this week meeting with political leaders about legislation that would cap the amount of ethanol that could be blended below the so-called blend wall of 10 percent. [node:read-more:link]

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis today published a report noting weaknesses in the financing behind the Dakota Access Pipeline and questions  around the long-term usefulness of the project.    The report—“The High-Risk Financing Behind the Dakota Access Pipeline: A Potential Stranded Asset in the Bakken Region of North Dakota”— describes how the company behind the pipeline is under extreme financial to complete the project and how the pip [node:read-more:link]

The Interior Department finalized a rule today designed to slash the volume of natural gas that's vented and flared each year into the atmosphere from roughly 100,000 wells on federal and tribal lands. The Methane and Waste Prevention Rule's goal is twofold: Reduce releases of methane, a greenhouse gas that's more than 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and ensure that taxpayers get a fair return on the use of federal lands by capturing flared gas that is not subjected to royalty payments. [node:read-more:link]