Energy & Fuel

"Barclays this week downgrades the entire electric sector of the U.S. high-grade corporate bond market to underweight, saying it sees long-term challenges to electric utilities from solar energy, and that the electric sector of the bond market isn’t pricing in these challenges right now. It’s a noteworthy downgrade since electric utilities which make up nearly 7.5% of Barclays’ U.S. Corporate Index by market value."

"A federal appeals court today threw out a high-profile Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order that provided incentives for electricity users to consume less power, a practice dubbed demand response."
 

"Albany, New York Sheriff Craig Apple assured a room of concerned citizens that county emergency crews were prepared to handle an oil-train accident involving three or four tank cars."

The Canadian government treats journalists reporting on the tar sands as if they were the enemy.

"This is a case study of how a trade group takes a snippet of congressional testimony and twists it out of proportion for political purposes."

"Biofuel groups expect the Environmental Protection Agency to send the final proposed targets to the White House as soon as Friday."

"A watchdog group suggested Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) move to lower the renewable fuel standard came at the behest of big business."

"Federal environmental officials said Thursday that they have reached a deal with Duke Energy to clean up its mess from a massive coal ash spill into the Dan River that coated 70 miles of the waterway in North Carolina and Virginia with toxic gray sludge."

"British oil giant BP plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to require that businesses prove the Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused them financial losses before they can collect money from a multibillion-dollar settlement of private claims resulting from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster."

"In the heart of Texas' mineral-rich Eagle Ford Shale, freshwater isn't the only precious resource for both oil companies and local communities. Brackish groundwater aquifers are also becoming increasingly valuable — as potential drinking water supplies, and also as locations for disposing wastewater from drilling and hydraulic fracturing."