Budget & Policy

Texas congressmen are not happy with the Department of Energy’s proposal to reallocate $240 million of funding for the Texas Clean Energy Project under the Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) to new, smaller demonstrations of innovative clean coal technology. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz heard a lot about the project during a Tuesday hearing of […]

An article in Wednesday’s Weapons Complex Morning Briefing incorrectly cited the legal deadline for removal of legacy transuranic waste from Idaho. The date is 2018. The ExchangeMonitor regrets the error.

The Environmental Protection Agency has put thousands of coal workers out of jobs in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia; driven high-emitting industries to consider moving to China; and divided the nation, GOP lawmakers told EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on Tuesday in two separate House committee meetings focused on the agency’s fiscal year 2017 budget request. […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday denied a motion by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute to file a petitioner’s brief in the case against the Clean Power Plan regarding alleged collusion between the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental groups during the drafting of the emissions reduction rule. E&E Legal’s […]

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) message to states on the Clean Power Plan has shifted from “don’t start” to “stop.” The senator, who has been urging states to refuse to comply with the regulation, penned a letter to the nation’s governors Monday calling on them to halt any actions underway to meet their obligations […]

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump does not believe in man-made climate change and the Washington Post is not impressed. The billionaire businessman sat down with the newspaper’s editorial board this week to discuss a host of issues, including violence at his rallies, libel laws, and race. When asked about climate change, he said, “I know […]

Maryland has joined the group of states, including Oregon and New Jersey, seeking more ambitious renewable energy portfolio standards. The Maryland House of Delegates on Monday voted 92-43 to ramp up the state’s current portfolio standards from a requirement of 20 percent renewable energy generation by 2022 to 25 percent by 2020. Lawmakers removed language in […]

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a Tuesday hearing of the House science committee unequivocally denied he ever transmitted sensitive or classified information over a nongovernment email account. The question was raised late in a two-hour budget hearing by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), who briefly held the gavel for Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). “Have you […]

Carbon capture and storage is required if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5°C – 2°C, as called for in the Paris Agreement, Global CCS Institute CEO Brad Page wrote in an institute article published Monday. “Independent, credible forecasts are that by 2040 the world will still be predominantly reliant on energy from […]

Coal is falling out of favor in the U.S., a trend that is likely to continue as long as market forces driven by low-cost natural gas remain in play, according to Thomas Covert, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago and co-author of the paper “Will We Ever Stop Using Fossil Fuels?”, […]

Minnesota is likely to adopt a trade-based compliance strategy under the Clean Power Plan (CPP), should the regulation survive legal challenge and come into force, according to an outline sent to state lawmakers last week. “At this time, Minnesota is considering primarily the trading ready approaches, including subcategorized rate targets and mass targets for existing […]

The state of Washington has picked an experienced environmental law attorney to lead the Hanford Site regulatory work at the Department of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program. Alex Smith will start work in the Richland office as program manager on April 18, replacing Jane Hedges, who retired at the end of February. Tom Tebbs will continue […]

The National Coal Council, an advisory board to Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, has set their annual spring meeting for April 19-20 at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza in Washington, D.C. Moniz is scheduled to keynote the public meeting Wednesday Morning. Armond Cohen, co-founder and executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, Robert Purgert, president […]

It’s not clear when, or if, the National Nuclear Security Administration intends to release the fiscal 2015 performance evaluation reports for its contractors. Posting of the reports is already overdue and the NNSA has given mixed signals about its plans. Outside of targeted audits and investigations by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General […]

Valerie Insinna Defense Daily 03/18/2016 If the Navy is permitted to fund its ballistic missile submarine through a special fund, lawmakers should consider a similar mechanism for modernizing the Air Force’s legs of the nuclear triad, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Wednesday. Over the next decade, the Navy and Air Force are slated […]

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) this week introduced legislation that would allow the Department of Energy to contract private companies for interim storage of nuclear waste. Such legislation is seen as necessary for establishing private, interim facilities that would store spent nuclear fuel now held on-site at nuclear power plants around the country. Two companies, Waste […]

The North Dakota Health Council violated state public meeting law during the approval process for rule changes that allow for higher radioactivity levels in oil-field waste, state Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem concluded in an opinion Tuesday. According to Stenehjem, the council failed to provide proper public notice for an August 2015 meeting in which the […]

A story in the March 11 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor (“Draft Savannah River Site Solicitation Leads EM Procurement Blitz”) should have said the Energy Department released a request for information in October for companies interested in taking over cleanup work managed by DOE’s Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site in Washington state.

House Republicans in a letter Thursday urged Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to “expeditiously” restart the stalled Yucca Mountain license application review. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and panel member John Shimkus (R-Ill.) penned the letter, seeking information on DOE’s nuclear waste policy. The letter comes two weeks after Upton and Shimkus sent a […]

Utah’s legislature on March 11 passed a bill establishing a five-year pilot program under which the state Public Service Commission can authorize electricity provider Rocky Mountain Power to spend $1 million annually on clean coal technology. The Sustainable Transportation and Energy Plan (STEP) allows the utility “to implement a combined line item charge on … […]

Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Cloud Peak Energy, the three largest coal companies in the United States, have made a practice of relying heavily on subsidized federal coal, Greenpeace said in a report Thursday. “Each of these three coal mining companies depend on federal coal for the vast majority of the coal they mine in […]

The United States needs to ramp up investment and policy support for carbon capture and storage technology, according to Jay Faison, founder and CEO of the ClearPath Foundation, an organization with a mission to accelerate conservative clean energy solutions. “A constructive and conservative vision, which the DOE supports, would harness all of our nation’s energy […]

The Senate’s sweeping energy package, held up in the high chamber for more than a month and a half, will likely remain in limbo until mid-April at the earliest, a congressional aide told GHG Daily on Thursday. The package was first brought to the Senate floor in late January, and from there its approval process […]

The Obama administration is deliberately trying to put the coal industry out of business using executive authority, according to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.). Enzi, in a Wednesday evening post on Medium titled “The war on warm houses, cold beer and bright lights,” stated that “President Obama and his Administration have unleashed a slew of policies […]

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change expanded its ranks by one Thursday with the official addition of Palestine. With the new addition, the UNFCCC now has 197 members. The Palestinian government began the process of joining the UNFCCC in December, officially ratifying the convention on Dec. 18, 2015. Under UNFCCC rules, “the Convention […]

Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has some hurt feelings to smooth over in coal country after making a controversial remark over the weekend regarding the future of the coal industry under her presidency. The Democrat, during a televised town hall Sunday, said that her proposed energy plan would “put a lot of coal miners and coal […]

Energy-related CO2 emissions remained flat for the second year in a row in 2015, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency. “The new figures confirm last year’s surprising but welcome news: we now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol […]

Ed Davey, the U.K.’s former secretary of state for energy and climate change, has voiced some strong opinions about the current government’s decision to scrap a £1 billion carbon capture and storage commercialization competition. “The Conservatives’ decision to pull the funding was not based on evidence: it was irrational,” the Liberal Democrat said in a […]

This year is likely to the be first in which natural gas-fired energy generation will exceed coal-fired generation in the United States on an annual basis, according to data released Wednesday by the Energy Information Administration. Gas surpassed coal on a monthly basis in April 2015 and by the year’s end the two were essentially […]

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) this week introduced legislation that would allow the Department of Energy to contract private companies for interim storage of nuclear waste. Such legislation is seen as necessary for establishing private, interim facilities that would store spent nuclear fuel now held on-site at nuclear power plants around the country. Two companies, Waste Control Specialists […]