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An explosion on Tuesday morning at CPS Energy’s 420-MW Deely 1 power plant that left one worker with minor injuries has damaged the coal-fired unit’s cascade building, the San Antonio municipal utility said. The blast that occurred shortly before 11 a.m. at a 7,500-acre site in southeast Bexar County prompted officials to evacuate the building […]

Nearly 100 renewable energy and environmental groups and businesses have asked the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to reevaluate renewable energy forecasts, alleging the agency’s projections don’t reflect “the current status and recent, real-world growth rates of renewables.” In a Sept. 10 letter to EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski, the coalition says the agency’s estimates in past […]

The Department of Energy on Wednesday conditionally authorized Dominion Cove Point LNG, LP to export domestically produced liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries that do not have a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), marking the fourth order allowing non-FTA LNG exports. The orders authorizes Dominion Cove Point LNG to export 0.77 billion cubic feet of natural […]

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy on Tuesday pushed top officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to act immediately to restart the Yucca Mountain repository licensing process. Only two witnesses testified at the hearing on how the Obama administration intends to […]

U.S. states vary widely on how they are regulating the booming business of producing natural gas from shale formations, according to a study released this summer by the Washington environmental think tank Resources for the Future (RFF). “As the shale gas boom has taken off,” says RFF, “states have updated their regulations, each with varying […]

The revolution that has toppled coal from the top of the generating queue in the U.S. has not reached the rest of the world, according to the “BP Statistical Review of World Energy.” While natural gas may have supplanted coal as king of the hill in the U.S. electric generating mix, the solid mineral—geographically the […]

Much recent debate about shale gas recovery through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has focused on methane emissions from shale gas wells. The general take on this topic is that methane (the remarkably simple molecule CH4) is a greenhouse gas “20 times” or “25 times,” or some other number, more “potent” than carbon dioxide, the […]

Linde Group, an international industrial gases firm based in Munich with a U.S. home in New Jersey, is an unusual beneficiary of the U.S. shale gas revolution. The company has developed technology using the industrial gases it can produce in copious quantities, to reduce some of the environmental objections to developing shale gas wells. Linde […]

Looking Out for Shale Gas Labor Issues The Houston Chronicle reports that the U.S. Department of Labor is closely watching how shale gas producers protect their laborers from workplace accidents and injuries. They suspect violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act on hours of work and overtime pay. The gas industry’s critiques say the companies […]

In a welcome development almost no one saw coming, America’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen to 1992 levels and are expected to continue to decline, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA). In addition to a sluggish economy and more fuel efficient cars, “fracking” has been a big driver of this trend. “Fracking” is shorthand for […]