Yale Environment 360 “Coal companies conducted widespread mountaintop removal mining from 1985-2015 at the intersections of Perry, Knot, and Breathitt counties in Kentucky. From 1985 to 2015, coal companies blasted an average of 21,000 acres of Appalachian land every year in search of coal — an area about half the size of Washington, D.C., according… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Energy
FOIA request for Interior Department emails and sale of US national heritage sites reveals clear and present danger
Washington Post: “In a quest to shrink national monuments last year, senior Interior Department officials dismissed evidence that these public sites boosted tourism and spurred archaeological discoveries, according to documents the department released this month and retracted a day later. The thousands of pages of email correspondence chart how Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his… Continue Reading
EPA Report on Flint Water Crisis identifies past and moving forward crisis
On July 19, 2018 the EPA Inspector General released a 74-page report about the Flint Water Crisis (report #18-P-0221) – Management Weaknesses Delayed Response to Flint Water Crisis – “The EPA should strengthen its oversight of state drinking water programs to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency’s response to drinking water contamination emergencies.”… Continue Reading
How Brett Kavanaugh Could Reshape Environmental Law From the Supreme Court
The New York Times: “Long before President Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court on Monday, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh had already made a name for himself as an influential conservative critic of sweeping environmental regulations. During his 12 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often regarded… Continue Reading
Attempting to Define the Human Right to Water with an Annotated Bibliography & Recommendations for Practitioners
Jootaek Lee and Maraya Best – 10 Georgetown Environmental Law Review Vol 1., Fall 2017. “This Article investigates research issues related to the right to water, attempts to define and narrow the scope of the human right to water, and suggests research methodologies. Specifically, this Article provides a definition of the human right to water and identifies the… Continue Reading
World trending to hit 50% renewables, 11% coal by 2050
Bloomberg New Energy Finance – New Energy Outlook 2018: “…The clean energy analysis firm estimates that in a mere 33 years, the world will generate almost 50 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and coal will make up just 11 percent of the total electricity mix. Add in hydroelectric power and nuclear energy, and… Continue Reading
Mapping the World’s Coal Capacity
Center for Data Innovation: “Climate news publication Carbon Brief has created several data visualizations mapping the location and capacity of the world’s coal power plants. An interactive timeline map allows users to scroll from 2000-2017 to see where plants are operating, opening, and have closed. The maps illustrate that the world’s coal capacity has nearly… Continue Reading
Alaska Refuge May Be the Most Contested Land in the U.S.
The National Geographic [includes photos and graphics]: Congress voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Here’s what’s at stake for America’s wild frontier. “…the current U.S. administration is eager to proceed with the two lease sales, of at least 400,000 acres each, ordered by the new law. Assuming various regulatory and… Continue Reading
US recycling hits a wall – China’s ban on imported waste
The New York Times: Plastics and papers from dozens of American cities and towns are being dumped in landfills after China stopped recycling most “foreign garbage. “…as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import “foreign garbage.” Since Jan. 1 it has banned imports of various… Continue Reading
Demand for electric vehicles will rise significantly – McKinsey
“Demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is primed for the passing lane. While EVs accounted for only about 1 percent of global annual vehicle sales in 2016 and just 0.2 percent of vehicles on the road, McKinsey estimates that by 2030 EVs (including battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) could rise to almost 20 percent of… Continue Reading
DOE Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit
“The Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit is an update and expansion of the Eastern Wind Integration Data Set and Western Wind Integration Data Set. It supports the next generation of wind integration studies. The WIND Toolkit includes meteorological conditions and turbine power for more than 126,000 sites in the continental United States for the… Continue Reading
Ireland’s Open Data Portal
Ireland launches the third version of their national data portal DATA.GOV.IE – Promoting innovation and transparency through the publication of Irish Public Sector data in open, free and reusable formats. “A new and improved version of the national Open Data portal, data.gov.ie was recently launched. It is the third iteration of the portal now using… Continue Reading
