Budget & Policy

The CEOs of 10 major international oil and gas companies are pledging a $1 billion investment campaign over 10 years to prepare and deploy low-emissions technologies. “The creation of OGCI Climate Investments shows our collective determination to deliver technology on a large-scale that will create a step change to help tackle the climate challenge,” according […]

There hasn’t been much catharsis this cycle for political junkies within the Energy Department’s nuclear complex who want to see some of the lightning from the presidential race trickle down to contests that may affect them professionally. Neither Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton nor Republican candidate Donald Trump have said much about the DOE nuclear […]

The Tri-Party Agreement for the Hanford Site in Washington state has been amended to delete the requirement that the Department of Energy submit a 2017 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report to its state and federal regulators in January. The department has been required under the Tri-Party Agreement to prepare the report annually as […]

Nuclear deterrence has regularly emerged as a topic of discussion during the 2016 presidential campaign, primarily as a means of illustrating the merits of the candidates’ capacity for leadership. Democrat Hillary Clinton recently highlighted a joint statement by 10 former Air Force nuclear launch officers that said Trump is “easily baited” and unfit to hold […]

The U.S. Defense Department is intent on fixing decades of underinvestment in the nation’s nuclear deterrent, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Thursday. The insufficient funding dates to the close of the Cold War, “when the United States believed it would be safe to allow funding for the nuclear enterprise to drop, and drop it did, […]

The National Coal Council, an advisory board to the secretary of energy on issues related to the coal industry, has scheduled its annual spring meeting for March 14-15, 2017, in Washington, D.C. The event will consist of a reception on March 14 and a full council meeting March 15. “We’ll have details on hotel logistics […]

Regardless of which party wins next week’s presidential election, reforming the 45Q carbon sequestration tax credit should be a priority, according to the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative. The group sent memos Tuesday to the transition teams of both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump making a case for updating the tax […]

More than 67,000 comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency in support of its Clean Energy Incentive Program came in Tuesday as the comment period for the program closed, according to the Climate Reality Project, which organized a commenting campaign. “The Clean Energy Incentive Program encourages states to invest in technologies like solar, wind, and […]

Based on the limits of the executive branch’s power it is possible to hypothesize what climate change and energy actions the next administration might take no matter which presidential candidate wins, experts said Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As with any modern U.S. election, there are two […]

The next president should cut spending for all federal greenhouse gas regulations, the conservative Heritage Foundation said Tuesday in its Blueprint for a New Administration. “The President should also call on Congress to pass legislation that prevents all agencies from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. No credible evidence suggests that anthropogenic warming poses a threat to […]

Implementation of the Clean Power Plan, carbon emission standards for existing coal-fired power plants, will make energy less affordable, further burdening the poorest Americans for whom energy prices have become unbearable, according to a report out Tuesday by the Pacific Research Institute. “By forcibly revising the current energy infrastructure, the CPP will raise the costs […]

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has throughout his campaign has had strong words about U.S. involvement in United Nations climate initiatives. Those words, according to Patrick Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, are backed up by the Republican Party’s 2016 platform. However, that opposition may not mean […]

The Obama administration has laid the groundwork for resilience against the effects of climate change that are already being felt in the United States, providing its successor with a foundation on which to develop a robust future strategy, according to a report released Monday by the White House’s Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. “[T]he […]

Investors are beginning to understand the importance of recognizing the potential risks posed by climate change to companies they look to put their money into, according to Mary Schapiro, former chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and current special adviser to the Group of 20’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. Companies have […]

The ExchangeMonitor has launched the Your Voice/Our Voice opinion space in its weekly Weapons Complex Monitor e-newsletter. If you or your company is involved with the legacy nuclear cleanup work managed by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, we want to hear from you. Send us a short letter to the editor (300 words) […]

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Monday the United States could be operating consolidated interim storage for nuclear waste in a little over five years if Congress would authorize his department to move forward, while also calling the stalemate over nuclear waste management a “hostage situation.” The Department of Energy continues to seek a solution to permament […]

Uncertainty and stress may be on the horizon for the Savannah River Site (SRS) workforce if Congress does not provide adequate and timely funding for operations at the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina, SRS stakeholders said earlier this week. Congress on Sept. 29 passed a stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution […]

  Uncertainty and stress may be on the horizon for the Savannah River Site (SRS) workforce if Congress does not provide adequate and timely funding for operations at the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina, SRS stakeholders said earlier this week. Congress on Sept. 29 passed a stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing […]

When it comes to battling climate change, there is only one choice in the presidential campaign pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton, onetime presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says in advocating for his former rival in a new video. Sanders, who has stumped regularly for Clinton since bowing out of the race […]

More than 40 economic and workforce development projects in coal communities nationwide have received a total of over $28 million in federal funding through the second round of awards under the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) Initiative, the White House announced Wednesday. “The POWER initiative exemplifies a collaborative approach to federal […]

Uncertainty and stress may be on the horizon for the Savannah River Site workforce if Congress does not provide adequate and timely funding for operations at the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina, SRS stakeholders said earlier this week. Congress on Sept. 29 passed a stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), […]

A large majority of the world’s companies globally have committed to reducing their greenhouse gases, but very few have developed long-term plans to meet their goal, CDP said in a report Tuesday. “There has been significant improvement in recent years in the numbers of companies setting targets for emissions reductions, but these targets are in […]

States in the Midwest can work together to bolster the use of biomass co-firing in coal-fueled power plants to drive down carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report from the University of Missouri. Interested in how woody biomass could be harnessed to help states reach the federally set emissions reduction targets of the federal Clean […]

The current and anticipated closure of U.S. nuclear power plants is a troubling development as states eye meeting their carbon dioxide emissions reductions requirements under the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said Monday. The nuclear industry and its supporters today tout zero-carbon atomic energy facilities as a means of addressing […]

A new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy warns of dire financial consequences, including millions of lost jobs, of instituting energy policies already enacted in European Union nations. The report notes that former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and various individuals and interest groups have cited value […]

A coalition of electric utilities filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the New York Public Service Commission in an attempt to reverse approval of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Clean Energy Standard, which is projected to pay upstate nuclear power plant operators nearly $8 billion in energy subsidies over the program’s lifetime. The coalition argues that Cuomo’s zero-emission-credit […]

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee defended his administration’s use of litigation in dealing with the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site against criticism from his Republican challenger at a debate Wednesday. Inslee’s administration has litigated a reopening of the lawsuit that resulted in the 2010 consent decree that sets the terms for cleanup at Hanford as […]

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, in the last of three debates, on Wednesday repeated their arguments over the nuclear weapon-related dangers of their opponent’s potential presidency, touching on the strategic stability between the United States and Russia. Commenting on the two nations’ strained relationship, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin […]

Two senior members of the House of Representatives this week said Russia is in “material breach” of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and that the Obama administration has failed to respond with sufficient strength to the threat. “It has become apparent to us that the situation regarding Russia’s violation has worsened and Russia is […]

Only 22 of 148 U.S. insurance companies evaluated in a report released Thursday by Ceres have adequately addressed climate risk, according to the nonprofit sustainability-focused organization. Ceres judged insurance companies in five areas: governance structures to address climate risk; climate risk management programs; use of catastrophe or other computer modeling tools to manage their climate […]