Budget & Policy

A group of Democratic Party senators on Wednesday urged President Barack Obama to take several steps in the final months of his presidency to reduce the risk of inadvertent nuclear war and to limit nuclear weapons spending. The letter was signed by Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Al Franken (Minn.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Jeff […]

Accepting the Republican nomination for president Thursday evening, Donald Trump briefly noted his commitment to ending the overregulation of the nation’s energy sector. “We are going to deal with the issue of regulation, one of the greatest job-killers of them all. Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and […]

Interested parties will have four more days to comment on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Energy Incentive Program Design Details, under an extension announced Thursday in the Federal Register. The design details were opened for comment June 30, with the input period due to end on Aug. 29. The enhanced comment period will run through […]

Describing coal as “clean” in the Republican Platform was a poor decision, Jay Faison, founder and CEO of clean energy firm ClearPath, said Wednesday during a panel discussion hosted by Politico on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. “I think we have to be realistic,” according to Faison, a self-described lifelong conservative. […]

Closing out the third night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, newly tapped vice presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) on Wednesday took a shot at Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s energy policy. The governor, selected as Republican nominee Donald Trump’s running mate last week, brought up a comment Clinton made while campaigning in […]

Electing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton president will inflict upon the coal industry at least four more years of heavy regulation based on left-wing policies, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.) said Tuesday evening during a headline speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. “The only thing we can trust Hillary to do is to […]

The amount of coal available for mining in the Powder River Basin under existing leases is “more than sufficient” to meet U.S. demand through 2040 in a scenario under which global temperature rise is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, according to a report issued Tuesday by Carbon Tracker. “We therefore recommend that, to be consistent […]

Utilities in the United States each year save billions of dollars due to federal and state tax loopholes, money that could instead be funneled into energy efficiency programs, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies. “Of the 40 U.S. publicly held utilities companies that were profitable in 2015, 23 paid […]

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) believes there may be a legislative fix for the culture of whistleblower retaliation a congressionally chartered report last week said persists across the Energy Department’s nuclear complex. The McCaskill-authored S. 795, “a bill to enhance whistleblower protection for contractor and grantee employees,” passed the Senate by unanimous consent in May and was […]

Minnesota-based Great River Energy on Friday announced plans to retire its Stanton Station coal-fired power plant by May 2017. The company has determined that the facility, located near Stanton in Mercer County, N.D., “is no longer economic to operate with current low prices in the regional energy market,” according to a Great River Energy press […]

New United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision last week to fold the nation’s Department of Energy and Climate Change into the newly formed Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, is not entirely bad news, according to an editorial Monday by Matthew Billson, program director for the University of Sheffield’s Energy2050 program. “A focus […]

Carbon pricing is often viewed at the most economical way to reduce emissions, and that might very well be true, but as with anything, the practice has its downsides, according to Ruth Greenspan Bell, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Putting a price on carbon might incubate new industries or […]

At the start of the 2016 Republican National Convention, the GOP on Monday adopted a platform heaped with support for the continued used of coal and decrying the current administration’s climate change efforts. The platform, as agreed to during a July 11 meeting of the platform committee, states that “coal is an abundant, clean, affordable, […]

New York state’s proposed credits for zero-emission nuclear power plants could stave off the scheduled or threatened closure of three facilities upstate, energy providers said this week. Exelon had said in recent months its R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant and Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station would eventually close without state incentives, while Entergy had announced […]

Both the Senate and House have passed motions to go to conference on the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) through a committee that will work to reconcile the two chambers’ versions of the bill. A Senate aide said Thursday conference has begun, though lawmakers this week also began a seven-week summer recess. The […]

The Department of Energy looked the other way for decades while its contractors on major nuclear cleanup projects illegally intimidated or fired employees who raised safety concerns, according to a report published Thursday by the Government Accountability Office. “DOE has infrequently used its enforcement authority to hold contractors accountable for unlawful retaliation, issuing two violation […]

After two very long nights of debate on scores of amendments, the House on Thursday voted 231-196 to approve the fiscal 2017 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. The bill, already facing a veto threat from the White House, passed with relatively little controversy compared to previous years. In 2015, for example, the process […]

If Republican nominee for president Donald Trump is elected in November, he would become the only head of state in the world to deny the science of climate change, according to a report issued this week by the Sierra Club. “Trump has a history of engaging in conspiracy theories, and in that vein he has […]

Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Wednesday introduced legislation extending and expanding the section 45Q tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration and utilization. “Preventing the worst of climate change will mean deploying a broad range of technologies to reduce carbon emissions,” Whitehouse said in a prepared statement “This bill would provide a […]

After weeks of discussion, the Senate voted Tuesday to go to conference on its energy bill. The bill, which started out in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with strong bipartisan support, persevered through a lengthy battle on the floor of the upper chamber before heading to the House in April, where bipartisanship was […]

The House of Representatives on Wednesday night approved several amendments to the fiscal 2017 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill taking aim at the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to combat climate change. Lawmakers worked late for the second night in a row wading through more than 130 amendments to the legislation. Just have midnight […]

Members of Congress and former U.S. officials continue to disagree over the necessity to field a new nuclear-armed cruise missile, the Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) weapon, and cited Wednesday the Russian nuclear modernization program as a factor complicating U.S. strategic deterrent needs. Subcommittee member Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) spoke at a Senate Appropriations Energy and Water […]

A provision in a fiscal 2017 House of Representatives spending bill prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing its carbon emissions standards for new and existing coal-fired power plants survived a challenge by Democrats late Tuesday evening. An amendment sponsored by Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) that would have struck the provision failed by a vote […]

Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee were unable Tuesday to remove language from the fiscal 2017 State Department funding bill that would bar U.S. contributions to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund. Two amendments were offered during the full committee markup of the bill that would have approved funding for the U.N. initiative. Under the […]

The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 240-171 in favor of a bill that would eliminate the so-called Chevron deference, a judiciary practice by which courts defer to the interpretation of a government agency in cases of ambiguous statutory meaning. The Separation of Powers Restoration Act of 2016 would leave it up to judges to […]

A group of more than 250 green organizations on Tuesday filed a legal petition under the Administrative Procedures Act requesting that the Obama administration halt all new fossil fuel leasing on federal lands. Such a moratorium already exists for coal leasing. The new petition, in contrast, calls for “Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to place an […]

Under a Supreme Court issued stay of the implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, some states have decided to stop working on compliance, others are moving ahead full bore, but most fall somewhere in the middle, not working with gusto, but at least making some preparations, according to Michael Tubman, director of […]

Coal is a “clean” energy source, according to the latest draft of the Republican Party’s 2016 platform. The party’s platform committee is meeting this week in Cleveland to update the document ahead of the GOP National Convention next week in the Ohio city. The committee on Monday filed through several amendments in the section on […]

Staff at the New York Public Service Commission have proposed an initial zero-emission credit of $17.48 per megawatt hour intended to prevent closure of several upstate nuclear power plants. The proposal, released for public comment on July 8, is part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s planned Clean Energy Standard, which calls for half of all state […]

Avoiding what could have been a major point of contention in the Democratic Party platform drafting process, representatives appointed by the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the Hillary Clinton campaigns Saturday agreed on a “unity amendment” on climate change. “It was going to get very intense tonight without the coming together, so I’m appreciative of […]