Environmental

Despite recent regulatory reforms relieving the oil industry of certain federal requirements, many oil and gas companies, refineries, and pipeline facilities operating in California are not immune from state regulatory requirements, including some new regulations that become effective August 30, 2018. Even if companies think they are in compliance, they should check again to make […]

The European Union (EU) is unequivocally continuing down a path of global climate and energy leadership while bringing online more carbon-neutral fuel systems throughout its 28 member states, closing in on the 2020 goal of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from 1990 levels. Indeed, the newly released European Environment 
Agency’s (EEA’s) Trends […]

An energy transition is underway across the world. Market upheaval, defining events, and recent policy changes have accelerated a shift away from coal toward renewables. Here is how this transformation played out for some of the world’s major economies over the past decade. Graphs show percent of each fuel source of total generation for that […]

Unmanned aerial systems—drones—have quickly found their place in the power sector. But as the industry moves out of test cases and experiments, and into full implementation of drones, it is facing a whole

Eight northeastern states are again suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force the agency to slash emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) blowing in from power plants and other sources in nine “upwind” Midwestern and southern states. The Ozone Transport Region, which was established by Congress under Section 184 of […]

A bill backed by outgoing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to subsidize the state’s nuclear power plants unanimously passed a joint committee on December 20 and now heads to the full legislature for a vote. S.3560, introduced on December 14, directs the Board of Public Utilities to issue Nuclear Diversity Certificates (NDCs) to nuclear power […]

A utility group on December 18 agreed to keep a coal-fired power plant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, open for at least a few more years, and its members said they are prepared to move forward with distributed generation and could import power to make up for the eventual retirement of the Martin Drake Power Plant. […]

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt told House lawmakers on December 7 that the agency will introduce a rule to replace the Obama administration’s legacy Clean Power Plan. Pruitt told Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) in a brief exchange, during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Environment held on Thursday […]

New Jersey lawmakers are exploring whether to legislatively prop up future operation of two nuclear power plants in the state, holding a hearing on December 4 in which key stakeholders sounded off on how nuclear subsidies could affect the environment, the economy, and the power market. The hearing, jointly held by the state Senate Environment […]

In a November report, The Global CCS Institute said carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the only technology able to decarbonize the industrial sector. To reach the Paris Agreement’s target to keep global atmospheric temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius, 2,500 CCS facilities will need to be operational by 2040, with 14% of cumulative […]