Energy & Fuel

"Multiple coal ash sites in Illinois sit within or adjacent to flood plains, according to environmental watchdogs."

"With countless acres of flat, fertile farmland traversed by major rivers, Illinois is familiar with major flooding.

Just as towns were built along rivers in decades past, so were coal-fired power plants that relied on the water for cooling and transporting coal. Now, those plants — some defunct and some still operating — are also repositories for toxic coal ash that could pose a risk of contamination when floodwaters rise.

"Russian social media accounts focused on U.S. division over coal jobs as part of an effort to sway the 2016 presidential election, according to the newly released report from special counsel Robert Mueller."

"South Carolina’s Republican-majority Senate advanced a measure on Wednesday that would require the state to block new infrastructure to transport or process offshore oil and gas as state lawmakers fear the Interior Department will open the Atlantic coast to offshore drilling."

"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s already shaky bid to persuade Canadians to fight climate change will get even tougher after the election on Tuesday of conservative Jason Kenney as premier of the energy-rich province of Alberta."

"Shalini Swaroop is general counsel for Marin Clean Energy, the first of a new breed of electricity providers in California known as community choice aggregators, or CCAs. When Marin Clean Energy launched in 2010, it gave San Francisco Bay Area residents a government-run alternative to Pacific Gas & Electric, the monopoly utility that recently filed for bankruptcy protection amid huge wildfire liabilities."

"Researchers at the Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT) in Finland and Energy Watch Group (EWG) have completed a 4½ year study that examined how to meet the goals of the Paris climate accords without such measures as carbon capture and geoengineering. Their conclusion? Run everything on electricity and generate all of that electricity using renewables, primarily solar."

"SolarReserve LLC has withdrawn its application to build the world’s largest concentrating solar-thermal power plant on public land in the Nevada desert, according to the Bureau of Land Management."

"A federal court has struck down the Trump administration’s repeal of an Obama-era policy aimed at boosting revenue for taxpayers by changing how energy companies value sales of coal, oil and gas extracted from federal and tribal land."

"The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a petition from an electric trade association group that challenged nuclear plant subsidies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

"U.S. presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said on Monday she would ban all fossil fuel extraction on federal land and in coastal waters, setting herself apart from a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls who have made climate change a central campaign issue but have yet to outline specific policies."