Budget & Policy

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/18/2015 A substantial group of U.S. and Chinese states, municipalities, provinces, and counties this week announced ambitious climate goals at the U.S.-China Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities Summit in Los Angeles. The states of California and Connecticut, along with 15 U.S. cities and one county, joined the Chinese municipality of Beijing, provinces of […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 9/18/2015 The Department of Energy will no longer provide funding for Centrus’ American Centrifuge project operations at its Piketon, Ohio facility, the company confirmed late last week. The announcement also noted a one-year extension funding for the American Centrifuge project’s research and development contract with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) is questioning millions of dollars in “unresolved costs” at Sandia Corp. in fiscal 2013 and several years prior, according to a DOE Inspector General’s Office (IG) report released yesterday. Sandia Corp., a Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMC) subsidiary that has managed and operated Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) since 1993, is required […]

The U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council has scheduled its first-ever EM Roundtable for Thursday, Sept. 17, providing congressional, private sector, and Department of Energy perspectives on DOE’s environmental management programs. The session will address "DOE’s EM program: The Next Five Years," and will feature Mark Whitney, principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management, along with staff […]

The Department of Energy will no longer provide funding for Centrus’ American Centrifuge project operations at its Piketon, Ohio facility, the company confirmed late last week. The announcement also entailed a reduction of funding for the American Centrifuge project’s research and development contract with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory by 60 percent for an additional […]

Brian Bradley RW Monitor 9/11/2015 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday revealed it is evenly split on whether it would support doubling proposed funding for the Yucca Mountain licensing review from the $25 million amount outlined in the House 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations Act to a $50 million request for fiscal year 2017. During […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 In a brief two-paragraph order issued Sept. 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied two requests to stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently finalized carbon standards for existing coal-fired power plants. The court has ruled “the petitions be denied because petitioners have not […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 The climate pledges being presented by member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to the climate negations being held in Paris in December will not likely be enough to meet the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2-degrees Celsius. For this reason, it is […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 9/11/2015 The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA), longtime critic and watchdog on activities at the Y-12 nuclear weapons site, said it appears almost certain that the government’s current plans for the Uranium Processing Facility will cost at least $10 billion and possibly much more. That analysis, according to OREPA coordinator […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/11/2015 Department of Energy (DOE) cybersecurity was breached 159 times out of a total of 1,131 cyberattack attempts from 2010 to 2014, USA TODAY reported yesterday upon obtaining incident reports from the agency through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). According to the report, attackers were able to access “administrative privileges […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/11/2015 The Department of Energy’s (DOE) mismanagement of email records, which has “remained largely unresolved” since a 2010 review first identified recordkeeping problems, "could significantly impact [DOE’s] ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, ongoing litigation, or law enforcement efforts,” the DOE Inspector General (IG) said in a report […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity came out swinging this week with the release of a video and memo alleging that the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently finalized carbon emissions standards are a “dressed-up version of the unpopular ‘cap and trade’ legislation from five years ago with a new […]

Alissa Tabirian WC Monitor 9/11/2015 The Department of Energy’s (DOE) mismanagement of email records, which has “remained largely unresolved” since a 2010 review first identified recordkeeping problems, "could significantly impact [DOE’s] ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, ongoing litigation, or law enforcement efforts,” the DOE Inspector General (IG) said in a report […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday revealed it is evenly split on whether it would support doubling proposed funding for the Yucca Mountain licensing review from the $25 million amount outlined in the House 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations Act to a $50 million request for fiscal year 2017. During a joint hearing yesterday of the […]

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) ineffective management of its email records, including its "inability to archive and retrieve email records could significantly impact [DOE’s] ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, ongoing litigation, or law enforcement efforts,” the DOE Inspector General (IG) said in a report released yesterday. The DOE and the National […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 9/4/2015 The governors of Washington and Oregon are asking Congress not to proceed with recommendations in a report on environmental management risk ordered by the last federal omnibus appropriations bill. The recommendations would substantially reduce states’ authority over environmental cleanup projects, including taking away the right to have disputes over missed […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/4/2015 Mississippi Power this week reported an additional $25 million in cost overages at the Kemper County Energy Facility in its monthly status report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The report, which tallies costs through July 2015, attributes the extra$25 million in the total project budget to “additional […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 9/4/2015 Members of the South Carolina congressional delegation late last month requested that the Department of Energy provide them with copies of all agency communications, guidelines, and instructions to The Aerospace Corp. for preparation of a report on plutonium disposition options the company completed in April. “In order for us to […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/4/2015 Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) last week sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter expressing concern over the Department of Defense’s (DoD) “unacceptable” errors in estimating the 10-year cost of the Air Force’s Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) aircraft. […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/4/2015 Meeting the international goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2-degrees Celsius could result in $100 trillion in stranded assets in the form of unburnable fossil fuels, unless carbon capture and storage is adopted at a large-scale, according to a new report released by Citigroup last week. “The one […]

GHG Monitor 9/4/2015 IN CONGRESS Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with Rep. Tom Price (R-S.C.), traveled to Saskatchewan, Canada, last week to tour SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture utilization and storage project. The Boundary Dam plant, which came online in October 2014, is the world’s first commercial-scale post-combustion coal-fired […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 8/28/2015 The Department of Energy (DOE) has submitted a document justifying revisions to its emergency preparedness and response guidelines in response to recommendations from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), according to an Aug. 19 letter from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to the DNFSB. The memorandum provides reasoning […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 8/28/2015 An emergency temporary 18 percent rate increase for Mississippi Power Co. (MPC) approved by the Mississippi Public Service Commission on Aug. 13 faces an immediate challenge in the form of petition to the Mississippi Supreme Court. The petition from a local businessman asserts the new emergency rate increase is […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 8/28/2015 The Department of Energy’s Office of the Inspector General has investigated allegations of misuse of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the FutureGen 2.0 carbon capture and storage program by project subrecipient Air Liquide. The IG “received a complaint alleging that a Project subrecipient had misused funds in […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 8/28/2015 BILLINGS, Mont. — The greatest obstacle standing to large-scale adoption of carbon capture utilization and storage is not technical readiness, but a need for more investment toward deploying the technology to drive project costs down, a senior Department of Energy official said here this week. “Financing is the main […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 8/28/2015 The Environmental Protection Agency, in drafting the final version of its carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants made changes so significant that some argue the agency has put itself in a precarious situation. “The final rule may well be more vulnerable, but careful analysis will need to […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 8/28/2015 It is unlikely any new coal-fired power plants will be built under the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently finalized New Source Performance Standards, which mandate the use of partial carbon capture and storage on any such facilities. While the reason for the hard stop in coal development is debated, with […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 8/28/2015 The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced tens of millions of dollars in funding for crosscutting research, carbon storage, and transformational carbon capture technologies. Funding is being provided through DOE and National Energy Technology Laboratory funding programs. Twelve projects have been awarded funding through the NETL’s Crosscutting Research Program’s […]

GHG Monitor 8/28/2015 ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT In its recently submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Australia has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The INDCs are public commitments made by countries stating what they intend to […]

September 8              House and Senate return from summer recesses. 10            Speech: Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), and Reps. John Fleming (R-La.), and Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), "Beyond the ‘Bomber’: The New Long-Range Sensor-Shooter Aircraft and […]