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President Trump derided rival billionaire Tom Steyer as a "wacky" and "crazed & stumbling lunatic" on Sunday, after Steyer -- who was one of the prominent liberals to receive a threatening suspicious package last week -- said he "absolutely was blaming" Trump for creating an atmosphere in which "anything can bubble up, and anything is bubbling up." Steyer fired back quickly, writing that Trump's comment was "unthinkable ... in the midst of the horrible political violence." The Twitter conflagration erupted after Steyer's wide-ranging interview with CNN's "State of the Union," in which the hedge fund manager called Trump "corrupt," and...

A billionaire West Virginia coal tycoon was among seven Americans killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of the Bahamas on Thursday evening, according to local officials and reports. Chris Cline, 61, a former coal miner who turned his Foresight Energy company into a billion-dollar operation in 2015, was killed in the crash at about 5 p.m. local time, the Palm Beach Post reported.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice confirmed Cline’s death on Twitter but offered no details on how it happened. “Today we lost a WV superstar and I lost a very close friend. Our families go back to the beginning of the Cline empire - Pioneer Fuel. Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give. What a wonderful, loving, and giving man,” Justice said. “Cathy and I are praying for his family and all those involved in this tragedy,” Justice said. Cline died the day before his 62nd birthday and was a native of Beckley, West...

Centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on Monday blasted former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to shut down all coal plants in the U.S. in 11 years -- saying it would “devastate” communities in his state.

Australia’s re-elected Prime Minister Scott Morrison once brandished a lump of coal in parliament, crying, “This is coal — don’t be afraid!” His surprise win in what some dubbed the “climate election” may have stunned the country, but voters should know what comes next in energy policy — big coal. Battered by extended droughts, damaging floods, and more bush fires, Australian voters had been expected to hand a mandate to the Labor Party to pursue its ambitious targets for renewable energy and carbon emissions cuts. Instead, Saturday’s election left them on course to re-elect the Liberal-led center-right coalition headed by...

A North Korean cargo vessel used to transport coal was seized in violation of international sanctions against the rogue regime, the U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday, just hours after the hermit kingdom fired two suspected short-range missiles. The 17,061-ton vessel, called the Wise Honest, is one of North Korea’s largest bulk carriers used to illicitly ship coal from North Korea and deliver heavy machinery to the Hermit Kingdom, officials said. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said this is the first time a North Korean cargo ship was seized for violating international sanctions. “This sanctions-busting ship is now out of service,” Assistant...

Germany, one of the world’s biggest consumers of coal, will shut down all 84 of its coal-fired power plants over the next 19 years to meet its international commitments in the fight against climate change, a government commission said Saturday. The announcement marked a significant shift for Europe’s largest country — a nation that had long been a leader on cutting CO2 emissions before turning into a laggard in recent years and badly missing its reduction targets. Coal plants account for 40% of Germany’s electricity, itself a reduction from recent years when coal dominated power production. “This is an historic...

President Obama infamously told Africans they should focus on their “bountiful” wind, solar and biofuel. If they use “dirty” fossil fuels to raise living standards “to the point where everybody has got a car, and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over.” So when South Africa applied for a World Bank loan to finish its low-pollution coal-fired Medupi power plant, his administration voted “present,” and the loan was approved by a bare majority of other bank member nations. The Obama Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support construction of...

Representative K.C. Becker and Senator Faith Winter have introduced legislation that would give Xcel Energy a green light and blank check to prematurely close existing power plants, replace them with expensive, intermittent resources, and then force captive electric ratepayers to pick up the tab with interest for the massive fuel switching scheme and workforce transition plans. ... Colorado Energy Plan (CEP) .. The monopoly utility is more than willing to build and build and build so it can fuel switch to utility-scale wind, solar, and batteries (which don’t really exist yet) at the expense of Colorado ratepayers. Instead of saving...

….It remains unclear why Australian imports have been targeted for the hold-ups at customs.. ... Tension between Canberra and Beijing has been growing in recent years amid concern about China’s military ambitions in the South China Sea but has intensified over the reach of technology companies such as Huawei and ZTE, the “state actor” cyber-attack on Parliament House and the rejection of Huang Xiangmo’s visa. However, there are also intriguing market-centred reasons why China might want to reduce its reliance on foreign resources and which suggest that Australia’s coal industry could be facing a more existential threat. Alex Turnbull, of...

With data and modelling from almost 8,000 coal power plants, researchers present the most comprehensive global picture to date of climate and human health impacts from coal power generation. To estimate where action is most urgently required, the research group led by Stefanie Hellweg from ETH Zurich's Institute of Environmental Engineering modelled and calculated the undesired side effects of coal power for each of the 7,861 power plant units in the world. "More than half of the health effects can be traced back to just one tenth of the power plants. These power plants should be upgraded or shut down...

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham threw her support behind a comprehensive energy bill Thursday that could pave the way to a 100 percent carbon-free electric grid in New Mexico by 2045. Senate Bill 489, co-sponsored by Democratic lawmakers Mimi Stewart and Jacob Candelaria in the Senate and Nathan Small in the House, sets aggressive requirements for public utilities to acquire renewable resources over the next 20 years while eliminating all carbon-emitting generation. It also authorizes the use of bonds for Public Service Co. of New Mexico to pay for costs associated with closing the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station near Farmington...

Forget "rolling coal." A new trend called "ICE-ing," in which pickup truck owners purposefully block electric vehicle charging stations, appears to be gaining ground around the country. The practice, whose name is derived from "internal combustion engine," was observed over the holidays at a Sheetz gas station in Hickory, N.C. Reddit user Leicina shared a photo on Dec. 23, 2018, of three large pickups blocking access to Tesla Inc. charging stations. The drivers apparently chanted "----Tesla." "I've never had a supercharging experience like this one," wrote Leicina, who owns a Tesla Model 3. "These trucks blocked all the chargers, chanted...

The Trump administration has targeted an Obama-era regulation credited with helping dramatically reduce toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, saying the benefits to human health and the environment may not be worth the cost of the regulation. The 2011 Obama administration rule, called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, led to what electric utilities say was an $18 billion clean-up of mercury and other toxins from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. Overall, environmental groups say, federal and state efforts have cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 85 percent in roughly the last decade. Mercury causes brain...

Gun laws “You will get gun reform when the public says they’ve had enough. Until they’ve said enough, it’s not going to happen. ... There’s going to come a point where people say enough of this.” Constitutional amendments He would support a GOP measure to make changes more difficult “only if they come with the idea of making it easier to get on the ballot with the (initiated statute). “If it’s not, I think we should reject it, because the public needs to be heard. I’d rather this (trivial) stuff doesn’t go into the constitution, but if you don’t give...

In the name of protecting the environment, some public and political leaders want most of our electrical energy to come from renewables. The reality is that wind and solar combined supply only 17 percent of electricity-generating capacity in the U.S. and even less globally. This has not deterred environmental organizations and some members of Congress from raising public expectations about renewables. A group of Democrats, led by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), is floating the idea of a “Green New Deal” calling for a transition to 100 percent renewable power. At the same time, 29 states are pressing ahead with renewable...

The Environmental Protection Agency acted again Thursday to ease rules on the sagging U.S. coal industry, this time scaling back what would have been a tough control on climate-changing emissions from any new coal plants. The latest Trump administration targeting of legacy Obama administration efforts to slow climate change comes in the wake of multiplying warnings from the agency’s scientists and others about the accelerating pace of global warming. In a ceremony Thursday at the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler signed a proposal to dismantle a 2015 rule that any new coal power plants include cutting-edge techniques to capture...

KATOWICE, Poland (AP) — As leaders attending the U.N.’s annual climate summit heard fresh warnings about the dire consequences of leaving global warming unchecked, a new issue emerged Monday as a pressing concern: how to persuade millions of workers their industry can’t have a future if humanity is to have one.Hosting the talks in the heart of its coal region of Silesia, Poland tried to set the tone for the two-week meeting by promoting the idea of a “just transition” for miners and other workers facing layoffs as countries adopt alternative energy sources. “We are trying to save the world...

Eskom’s warning that the country was threatened by months of rotating blackouts became a reality in less than 24 hours. The state-owned company, which produces most of South Africa’s power, said on Wednesday that controlled blackouts could return and last throughout the year. Even more concerning is that the company expects energy availability of the system will keep declining into early next year and probably only recover to current levels in six months. By Thursday, Eskom announced it was cutting 1GW from the grid. It doubled that amount on Friday in an outage that’s scheduled to last 13 hours. For...

Under banners: “Without good work, no good climate! We are speaking out for our jobs,” as many as 20,000 mine workers took part in demonstrations organized by the IG BCE and Verdi trade unions on Wednesday in Bergheim near Cologne, Germany. IG BCE President Michael Vassiliadis has been a member of the coal commission since the summer. He called for a more respectful approach toward mine workers, akin to the attitude shown environmentalists campaigning to save the ancient Hambach forest. “The actions of forest conservationists are given maximum understanding,” Vassiliadis told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “But employees’ concerns are often...