Free Republic

<p>DENVER — A spokesperson for the radical Santa Fe-based anti-coal group WildEarth Guardians showed no regard and no respect for the families and communities in Colorado who have everything to lose if the Colowyo mine is shut down.</p>

A lawsuit brought by environmentalists and federal regulators has forced a major utility to phase out coal use at six power plants in Iowa. Activists claim these retirements bring the total number of U.S. coal plants shut down to 200 — or 40 percent of the U.S. coal plant fleet. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department of Justice announced an Iowa subsidiary of Alliant Energy agreed to pay $7.1 million in civil penalties to environmental projects for violating the Clean Air Act. The settlement also requires the company to stop burning coal or shut down six power...

Natural gas overtook coal as the top source of U.S. electric power generation for the first time ever earlier this spring, a milestone that has been in the making for years as the price of gas slides and new regulations make coal more risky for power generators. About 31 percent of electric power generation in April came from natural gas, and 30 percent from coal, according to a recently released report from the research company SNL Energy, which used data from the U.S. Energy Department. Nuclear power came in third at 20 percent. A drilling boom that started in 2008...

Most of the 1.5 million electricity consumers served by the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association probably don’t think about it. But when they wake up and flip on their light switches each morning, they can thank in significant part Tri-State’s Craig Station power plant in Moffat County, the second largest in Colorado. And that power plant can operate only thanks to hundreds of local workers digging in, not just figuratively at the plant itself, but literally at the two area surface mines — Colowyo and Trapper — that provide the plant’s coal. ... With 220 people working at Colowyo, some...

The community of Craig is holding its collective breath today, waiting on the feds to decide by midnight whether they will bother to challenge a court decision that threatens to shutter the Colowyo Mine. The Interior Department has gobbled up the entire period allotted to them to decide whether to appeal. We can only hope they have used this time wisely to decide in favor of the 200 plus workers whose jobs are on the line. And the lines in the proverbial sands have been clearly drawn. On one side is the radical environmental group WildEarth Guardians, who brought the...

Bill Gates recently noted that the cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is ‘beyond astronomical.’ On June 30, one day after the Supreme Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants, resident Obama committed the United States to the goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This would nearly triple the amount of wind- and solar-generated electricity on the national grid. The EPA ran afoul of the law by failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before it acted to reduce mercury emissions from coal-power plants. There is no objective...

Indiana will not comply with President Barack Obama's plan to battle climate change by requiring reductions in emissions from coal-fired power plants, Republican Gov. Mike Pence said Wednesday. The proposal as currently written, known as the Clean Power Plan, will make Indiana electricity more expensive and less reliable and hurt economic growth in Indiana and across the nation, Pence wrote in a letter to Obama. The plan targets pollution from the coal-fired power plants that Indiana relies on. Pence said the Indiana coal industry employs more than 26,000 people. "If your administration proceeds to finalize the Clean Power Plan, and...

While the energy history of the United States is one of significant change, three fossil fuel sources—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—have made up at least 80% of total U.S. energy consumption for more than 100 years. Recent increases in the domestic production of petroleum liquids and natural gas prompted shifts between the uses of fossil fuels (largely from coal-fired to natural gas-fired power generation), but the predominance of these three energy sources is likely to continue into the future. For the first several decades of American history, families used wood (a renewable energy source) as a primary source of energy....

FULL TITLE: Black Chamber of Commerce: EPA Clean Air Plan Will Increase Black Poverty 23%, Strip 7,000,000 Black Jobs (CNSNews.com) - A study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2.1 million black-owned businesses in the United States, found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan would increase black poverty by 23 percent and cause the loss of 7 million jobs for black Americans by 2035. The study also found that the EPA' plan would increase Hispanic poverty by 26 percent and cause the loss of 12 million jobs for Hispanic Americans by 2035. The...

Sweeping pollution limits at the center of President Barack Obama’s climate change plan are facing increased scrutiny in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that showed that the justices aren’t afraid to thwart perceived overreach by Obama or his Environmental Protection Agency. The high court’s ruling undermined Obama administration regulations targeting mercury and other hazardous air pollutants—a different set of regulations from the greenhouse gas limits that Obama is counting on to slow the effects of global warming. Still, the court’s willingness to rein in the EPA emboldened opponents of Obama’s climate change agenda, who said the court had...

The Supreme Court overturned the Obama administration’s landmark air quality rule on Monday, ruling the Environmental Protection Agency did not properly consider the costs of the regulation. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices ruled that the EPA should have taken into account the costs to utilities and others in the power sector before even deciding whether to set limits for the toxic air pollutants it regulated in 2011. The case, Michigan v. EPA, centers on the EPA’s first limits on mercury, arsenic and acid gases emitted by coal-fired power plants, known as mercury and air toxics (MATS). Opponents, including the...

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Environmental Protection Agency pollution rules for power plants Monday, in a blow to President Obama's environmental agenda. The EPA rules in question regulate hazardous air pollutants and mercury from coal- and oil-fired power plants, known as the MATS regulations. The regulations went into effect April 16. The utility industry argues that the rules cost them billions of dollars to comply and that EPA ignored the cost issue in putting the regulations into effect. Many of the companies have either made the investments or closed power plants to comply. If the investments necessary to upgrade...

A divided Supreme Court on Monday dealt a significant blow to the Obama administration's environmental agenda, invalidating a rule that would limit the release of mercury and other pollutants from power plants. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency did not appropriately consider the costs to utility companies when handing down the rule under the Clean Air Act. "We hold that EPA interpreted unreasonably when it deemed cost irrelevant to the decision to regulate power plants," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the court's majority opinion. Scalia was joined by the four conservative justices in his...

The Supreme Court has ruled against federal regulators’ attempt to limit power plant emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. The rules began to take effect in April, but the court said by a 5-4 vote Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency failed to take their cost into account when the agency first decided to regulate the toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants.

A study commissioned by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2.1 million black-owned businesses in the United States, found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan would increase black poverty by 23 percent and cause the loss of 7 million jobs for black Americans by 2035. The study also found that the EPA' plan would increase Hispanic poverty by 26 percent and cause the loss of 12 million jobs for Hispanic Americans by 2035. The EPA proposed the Clean Power Plan on June 2, 2014 to cut carbon emissions from power plants. ... There was a...

Greece’s energy minister Lafazanis said that [the coal-fired power plant] Ptolemaida V is required since renewable power plants are intermittent and endanger the country’s energy security. In May, Lafazanis sent a letter to the European Commission asking permission to operate the Ptolemaida III, a separate coal plant that is shut down due to its very old technology that pollutes the environment enormously. One of Lafazanis arguments was “the economic crisis in Greece, which makes the need for keeping the cost of energy for households’ heating as low as possible.”—.. Poland’s leading opposition party is seeking to negotiate exemptions from the...

When it comes to energy supplies — and therefore carbon dioxide emissions and climate change — who are you going to believe? Pope Francis, or BP? Whether you love the pope and hate BP, or vice versa, doesn’t matter. What matters when discussing energy availability, climate change, and poverty are hard numbers and simple math. And the latest edition of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, which was released eight days before Pope Francis issued his encyclical on climate change, is chockfull of numbers that expose the pope’s failed climate math. Indeed, an analysis of the two documents reveals the...

Hello, party leaders, potential candidates, lifelong donors, and long-suffering base voters. It’s me, the guy who constantly asks about Pennsylvania. The guy who drives people to muting me on Twitter because I won’t stop talking about Pennsylvania. Who is already showing flashcards of Collar Counties to his seven-week-old son. Recently, I received an email from a follower of the Decision Desk, the gist of which was asking me, yes or no, do I really believe the Keystone State is winnable. Well, here’s my answer: Yes. Yes, this state, which hasn’t gone for a Republican president since H.W. Bush in 1988,...

Businesses nix New Belgium in controversy over coal mineSeveral Craig-area businesses cut off New Belgium Brewery’s products after learning the craft beer maker is listed as a supporter of the environmental group that filed suit challenging a Moffat County coal mine. “We no longer carry New Belgium products because of what they stand for,” said Danny Griffith, owner of J.S. Snacks, a Craig restaurant and bar. “We’re not carrying them because of what we stand for. You take the coal out of Craig and you’ve got nothing.” Fort Collins-based New Belgium Brewing was “never aware” of the actions WildEarth Guardians...

Liquor stores and restaurants across Craig are pulling Colorado craft beers off their shelves due to the beer companies’ financial support to WildEarth Guardians, the environmental group that put Colowyo Coal Mine at risk of being shut down. Stockmen’s Liquor pulled 12 brands of beer — including New Belgium Brewery — because they are listed as WildEarth Guardians supporters. “We pulled those beers because their support of WildEarth Guardians... who said their ultimate goal is to shut down coal mines,” said Lori Gillam, owner of Stockmen's. “Craig is a coal mine town.” WildEarth Guardians has a list of business supporters...