Budget & Policy

The United States in the midst of a clean energy revolution that cannot be stopped, the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a report Monday. “The United States is changing fundamentally across the energy sector, accelerating away from fossil fuels into a clean energy future. The trend, obvious for more than a decade, is a […]

With just days left before Congress heads home for the holidays, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) is still pushing for a vote on a bill extending the existing 45Q tax credit for carbon storage. “Congress shouldn’t be a place where good ideas with bipartisan support fail to move forward,” Heitkamp wrote in an editorial published Sunday […]

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has an opportunity to chart a better path for action on energy and climate change than the one followed by the Barack Obama administration, the American Council for Capital Formation said in a report Monday. “[I]mproving the production and use of all sources of domestic energy is a better alternative to […]

Oral arguments in the case against the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon emissions standards for new-build coal-fired power plants are slated for April 17, 2017. According to an order filed Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, arguments will kick off at 9:30 a.m. The order provides no other details […]

Membership to the Paris Agreement now sits at 115 after last week’s ratification by Bulgaria. The deal, which establishes a legal framework under which nations are to pursue domestically determined climate actions, entered into force on Nov. 4, just days before the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework […]

U.S. cities will continue local efforts to address climate change even if national efforts come to a halt under the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump, the mayors of the U.S. cities included in the C40 said Friday. “Mayors don’t look at climate change as an ideological issue. They look at it as an economic and […]

Wide-scale deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) offers several benefits to the U.S., including emissions reductions and increased energy security, but current policy at the federal and state level is not adequate to reach that end, a report out Friday by a group of 14 states says. […]

A recently released report from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Inspector General (IG) identifies seven significant management challenges facing the agency in fiscal 2017. They are: financial assistance and contract management; cybersecurity; environmental cleanup; nuclear waste disposal; safeguards and security; stockpile stewardship; and infrastructure modernization. All but one of these categories were previously identified […]

Nuclear Navy vet Don Hoffman, longtime president of Excel Services Corp., in Rockville, Md., is reportedly out of the running to head the Department of Energy’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations, and Eric Knox, a former Energy Department civil servant with ties to the Yucca Mountain, is rumored to be in consideration, sources in Washington said […]

The conference report for the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017, which the House of Representatives approved Friday, strips out language from an earlier version of the bill that could have given the Energy Department a route to kill the embattled MOX project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In its last budget […]

Nuclear Navy vet Don Hoffman, longtime president of Excel Services Corp., in Rockville, Md., is reportedly out of the running to head the Department of Energy’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations, and Eric Knox, a former Energy Department civil servant with ties to the Yucca Mountain, is rumored to be in consideration, sources in Washington said […]

U.S. Republicans on Thursday elected Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) as the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Walden ran against committee member Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who has been a proponent of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste geologic repository in Nevada, and former committee chairman Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). Outgoing Chairman Fred […]

Illinois lawmakers on Thursday passed the Future Energy Jobs Bill, a controversial package of subsidies that power provider Exelon says will allow it to maintain operation of the Quad Cities Generating Station and the Clinton Power Station nuclear plants. The company had previously said it would close the facilities without nuclear subsidies. Both the Illinois House and […]

Germany on Thursday assumed the presidency of the Group of 20 nations, and international climate action advocates want the country to use its role to address the issue of climate change.  “Germany, at the helm of the G20 must reaffirm commitments to avoid irreversible climate change. It must, through its G20 leadership, work to ensure […]

Climate change is real, but its effects will not be catastrophic, the Manhattan Institute said in a report Thursday. “Analyses consistently show that the costs of climate change are real but manageable. For instance, the prosperity that the world might achieve in 2100 without climate change may instead be delayed until 2102,” the report says. […]

The world’s largest cities have a significant role to play in global climate change efforts and they’d best get moving, the C40 megacities network said in a report Thursday. “The overriding and deeply significant finding of the work is that the next 4 years will determine whether or not the world’s megacities can deliver their […]

With just days left in the 114th Congress, little attention has been paid to legislation calling for an extension and expansion of the 45Q tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration. This has not gone unnoticed by the Western Governors’ Association, which in a plea Wednesday to congressional leaders asked that the measure be added as […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy on Wednesday announced that 16 carbon storage projects across the nation will receive a total of nearly $45 million in funding. “CCS will play a very important role as the world moves toward a lower-carbon economy,” Lynn Orr, DOE’s undersecretary for science and energy, said in a […]

The key to the European Union’s low-carbon energy future lies with consumers, the European Commission said Wednesday in releasing a set of new clean energy proposals. “Consumers are active and central players on the energy markets of the future. Consumers across the EU will in the future have a better choice of supply, access to […]

The conference report for the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017, released Wednesday, would allow $13.1 billion in funding for the Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. That amount is roughly the midpoint of the $13.3 billion authorized under the House version of the bill and the $12.9 billion included in the Senate’s original […]

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has called on the Environmental Protection Agency to halt implementation of its Clean Power Plan, the implementation of which is already barred by the Supreme Court. “Given the substantial likelihood that the EPA’s burdensome regulations will be overturned by the incoming […]

A group of 29 heads of scientific organizations have pressed President-elect Donald Trump to quickly appoint a qualified science adviser to his administration. “This senior level advisor can assist you in determining effective ways to use science and technology to address major national challenges. Moreover, this individual can coordinate relevant science and technology policy and […]

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and presidential senior adviser Brian Deese have only weeks left in their current jobs, and they have some advice for their successors. “Coming from the private sector … I can tell you I was very naive walking in as a business person into the role. You realize very quickly the […]

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is none too happy about recent comments made by an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump regarding gutting NASA’s Earth science program, and he plans on doing something about it. “I think you have to take threats seriously. People need to mobilize to make the case for why this investment is […]

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on Tuesday penned a letter to Congress urging them to pass a full appropriations bill rather than confine the Defense Department to fiscal 2016 spending levels until May of next year. “I urge Congress to keep the CR (continuing resolution) as short as possible and finish full-year appropriations,” Carter wrote […]

Lawmakers completed conference of the fiscal year 2017 defense authorization bill and they hope to schedule votes as early as Friday, according to senior aides from the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Senior aides told reporters Tuesday they are in process of gathering signatures for the conference report and hope to have the text […]

Development of carbon capture and storage technologies would benefit from many of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises related to coal, Jeff Erikson, general manager for the Americas division of the Global CCS Institute, said during a Monday episode of E&E TV. “I think that Mr. Trump’s emphasis on coal will encourage more carbon capture and […]

With just weeks remaining in the 114th Congress, negotiators on the Energy Policy Modernization Act conference committee continue to dance around compromise. House negotiators on Friday received a new proposed conference draft from their Senate counterparts, according to a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee press release. Senate negotiators mulled over a House proposal through […]

The needs and priorities of the state should be considered before the needs of individuals when designing state-level mass-based carbon allowance allocation system under the Clean Power Plan, the Brattle Group said in a report Monday. “By deferring any examination of wealth transfers among interested parties to a later stage, policymakers will be able to […]

The governments of Saskatchewan and Canada have agreed to complete an “equivalency agreement” related to the nation’s newly announced regulatory program to end all unabated coal-fired electricity use by 2030. The agreement would give the province added flexibility in making the shift to low-carbon energy sources, including carbon capture and storage. “The province would be […]