Mid-pandemic, freelancer Erika Bolstad struck out from Oregon for the boom-bust Bakken oil fields of North Dakota, with cash from a grant, two story assignments and years of book research. She shares her experience on the road, dealing with COVID risks, tricky timing and a stubborn bureaucracy, as well as a generous well-plugger and supportive editors. Read the new FEJ StoryLog.
"In recent years, these data centers have been rapidly expanding in the United States. But the gargantuan facilities do more than keep cloud servers running — they also guzzle absurd amounts of water to run cooling systems that protect their components from overheating."
"The nation’s largest public utility is moving ahead with a plan for a new natural gas plant in Tennessee despite warnings that its environmental review of the project doesn’t comply with federal law."
"Staff at an influential corporate climate action group whose board announced a plan to allow companies to offset greenhouse gas emissions from their supply chain with carbon credits has now found such offsets are largely ineffective, a confidential preliminary draft reviewed by Reuters shows."
"Donald Trump has pledged to scrap President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, as well as other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry."
"Rising US demand for electricity is being met almost entirely by renewables, a new federal report has found. The new numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) suggest that the U.S. isn’t moving fast enough to reach the Biden administration’s climate targets."
"They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. And the technology is expanding rapidly."
"The automaker led by Elon Musk is no longer planning to take the lead in expanding the number of places to fuel electric vehicles. It’s not clear how quickly other companies will fill the gap."
"August Pfluger, an Air Force veteran and member of the U.S. House representing a small district in West Texas, isn’t exactly a household name on the national political scene, with little press coverage in the last two months outside a recent Fox News appearance. But he is the country’s top recipient of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry".
"The new rule builds on a landmark 2015 rule prohibiting coal ash from being permanently stored in places where it comes into contact with groundwater. This was meant to reform the widespread practice of creating so-called coal ash ponds where the toxin is stored in a wet slurry. While at that time the EPA only applied the rule to coal plants in active use, the new rule will require the cleanup of hundreds of “legacy” coal ash ponds."
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