Free Republic

London’s High Court on Friday quashed a planning permission for the UK’s first new coal mine in three decades, ruling that the permit was unlawful as it hadn’t considered the emissions from burning the fuel. Earlier this year, climate campaigners, including Friends of the Earth, challenged the approval of the coal mining project. The UK’s previous Conservative government approved in December 2022 the Woodhouse Colliery project in Whitehaven, northwest England.. The project to mine metallurgical coal, the one used for steelmaking, will be required to support steelmaking.. However, the new Labour government in the UK pulled in July its support...

A new method developed by Northwestern University uses electrical currents to solidify marine sand, creating durable, rock-like structures that could replace costly traditional coastal defenses like sea walls. Researchers from Northwestern University have demonstrated that a zap of electricity can strengthen a marine coastline for generations, mitigating the rising threat of erosion in the face of rising sea levels and climate change. In their study, recently published in Communications Earth and the Environment, the researchers took inspiration from clams, mussels, and other shell-dwelling sea life, which use dissolved minerals in seawater to build their shells. Similarly, the researchers leveraged the...

The Bureau of Land Management has published details of a plan to make millions of acres of public lands across the western U.S. available for development of solar power. The Western Solar Plan, which revises guidelines from more than a decade ago, was published in the Federal Register on August 30, 2024. The BLM said the plan would make 31 million acres of public lands (that is 48,437 square miles!) available for potential solar energy development. The new proposal seeks to bring solar projects to 11 states. The plan would place development closer to existing or planned power transmission lines,...

It currently costs NY about $36 per MWH for energy. But the state demanded wind. Let’s discuss the amazing bottom line results. So Much for So Little The Wall Street Journal asks Why Is New York Paying So Much for Wind Power? New York state signed a contract in June to buy electricity generated by two large wind farms, Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind, off the coast of Long Island. The projects are expected to begin in 2026 and 2027, with power delivered to Brooklyn (Empire) and Long Island (Sunrise). The state will pay $155 and $146 per megawatt-hour,...

California is doing all it can to expand renewable energy production and rebuild its electrical infrastructure after flaws led to a series of devastating wildfires. The state’s big utilities are spending billions to bury power lines and insulate wires, while at the same time moving quickly away from fossil fuels by building big solar and wind farms and transmission lines to carry the power. As a result, resident Jessica Simpson Nehrer, who lives in Borrego Springs, near San Diego, has seen her electricity bill for her ranch-style house soar. It hit $1,873.90 in June, far exceeding her $1,200 rent and...

A Fresno small restaurant owner says he has had enough after his PG&E bill was nearly double his rent. Manuel Perales, the owner of Yosemite Falls Cafe says his June utility bill was nearly $21,000. His rent? $10,000. “How do you pay that bill?" he said. He says it doesn't make sense to receive that astronomical bill even during the hottest months of the year. He's not the only one outraged with the increase of PG&E bills. He shares that one of his servers told him her monthly bill was $1,000. "This is a young lady with two kids. She...

I frequently write about how the mandates for energy transition that New York has adopted are impossible and irreconcilable in the real world; and therefore it is inevitable that they will have to be abandoned at some point when implementation of the project runs up against physical reality. Probably the most frequent question that I get asked is, OK, how and when will that occur? The question is important because for as long as the impossible mandates remain in place they are causing massive ongoing damage to our electricity system and to consumers. As examples, on the electricity generation side,...

Policies subsidizing generators, utilities, and unreliable energy have raised the cost of electricity in Texas by $19.9 billion in 2023, constituting 42.7 percent of total electricity costs. In a study published Wednesday by the Energy Alliance, the group found that the total government-imposed cost of electricity in the Texas Interconnection operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas was $84.3 billion. Texas state and local governments are responsible for causing 85.7 percent of that $84.3 billion. “The massive increase in subsidies has done nothing to address the primary cause of unreliability in the Texas market, renewable energy,” stated Bill Peacock,...

The peak electricity demand in Britain is in the winter when we need to heat our homes, offices, shops, warehouses, factories etc. But in the winter solar farms produce almost no electricity in Britain. This is because it is dark for around 16 hours a day and when the Sun does appear it is weak and usually hidden behind thick cloud. Solar energy may make sense in some countries, for example the countries of North Africa, but building solar farms in Britain is completely brainless.The new Energy Secretary Ed Milliband has just given the green light to the biggest solar...

China's coal output rose to a six-month high in June, statistics bureau data showed on Monday, as mines ramped up production to meet seasonal demand ... The world's largest coal producer mined 405.38 million metric tons of the fuel last month, a 3.6% increase on the year and the highest since December ... Output will continue rising in the third quarter ... Output in the January-June period was 2.27 billion tons

Big Tech consumes more than many countries.. Tech giants Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh each of electricity during 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries, new research has claimed. Analysis by Michael Thomas, shared on X, claims both Google and Microsoft consumed the same amount of energy as Azerbaijan, which has an estimated GDP of $78.7 billion. Google’s 2023 revenue stood at $307.4 billion, and Microsoft’s at $211.9 billion. The massive energy usage underscores the substantial environmental impact of these companies. But it also serves as a reminder of their sheer scale, and the positive impact...

Nearly a million Texans were still without power on Friday. And the utility company with the most outages was facing threats of violence. ... HOUSTON — Eating becomes more difficult when the power is out. Ovens, refrigerators, microwaves, and electric stove tops become obsolete. L. Myra Gainous’ shopping cart displayed that at an H-E-B grocery store Friday afternoon. As the 83-year-old Houstonian left the store, her cart was stocked with chips, bread and fruit snacks — food she can eat until her electricity returns. Gainous is one of nearly 1 million customers still living without power five days after Hurricane...

CenterPoint’s project would have used the money “to fund high wind and flood mitigation projects.” President Joe Biden’s Department of Energy rejected Houston’s request to strengthen its energy grid in 2023. Houston entered day five of power outages after Hurricane Beryl. Maybe, just maybe, stop concentrating on your fantasy green energy: CenterPoint Energy sought the money from a new $10.5 billion Department of Energy program that is helping utilities, states and local agencies protect the electric grid from the growing threats of extreme weather and climate change. “I don’t understand how the grant application could be rejected,” University of Houston...

Fair Oaks Ranch residents may want to brace themselves for a couple of sweaty evenings and place those backup batteries in their alarm clocks. CPS Energy is planning to cut power to some 1,300 homes in the Texas Hill Country town twice next week. The shutdowns will run from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. Monday, July 15, and Wednesday, July 17. According to a somewhat vague statement from the San Antonio power supplier, the planned outage will accompany “scheduled maintenance improvements” in Fair Oaks Ranch which is slated to “improve the electric reliability in the area.” The planned outage is...

It's been pretty interesting watching the carefully worded but dire warnings coming out about just how tenuous the future of reliable power is in the Empire State. On June 6, the folks who manage and operate the state's electrical grid, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), issued their 2024 Power Trends Report. One of the first things that should have jumped out at Green Gov Kathy Hochul and the climate cultists in the state legislature should have been the #mathz. That alone would have given a rational person pause, but who are we talking about, right? There's only about...

The Government of Maine has really big plans for floating wind, a floating net zero fantasy, in fact. Since floating wind power is the next big green thing, it is worth taking a close look at this ruinous vision. Floating wind is a fad, not an established technology. It has yet to be built at utility scale or tested in a hurricane. The world’s biggest grid-connected system is a tiny 50 MW and just came online off Scotland. The cost of floating wind is necessarily much greater than fixed wind. A fixed wind tower sits on a simple monopile, while...

A nationwide electricity outage struck Ecuador on Wednesday, leaving the nation of some 18 million in the dark, including the capital's subway system, as authorities worked to repair faulty power lines, a senior official said on Wednesday. "There is a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnection, so there's no electricity at a national scale," Public Works Minister Roberto Luque said in a post on X. Luque also serves as the country's acting energy minister. A Reuters witness said there was confusion on the streets of Quito, the capital, as traffic lights ceased working. Operations of Quito's...

Authorities say gunfire was the cause of a fire Monday at a North Carolina power station that resulted in 730 customers to lose electricity. Emergency crews responded to the problem as a fire and equipment failure on Duke Energy’s power distribution grid, which resulted in customers in the Durham area [losing power], according to the Associated Press. The following day, the Durham Police Department responded to a call about damaged power equipment and was told the damage was the result of gunfire in the past week.

Opposition to wind and solar projects on the state and local level increased significantly last year, according to a new study by Columbia University’s Sabine Center for Climate Change Law. In 2023, the report found 73% more local restrictions than the previous year’s report released in May 2023, and 111% more state-level restrictions. “In nearly every state, local governments have enacted laws and regulations to block or restrict renewable energy facilities, or project opponents have succeeded in forcing the delay or cancellation of particular projects, or both have occurred,” the report states.

NBC 5 learned more about how leaders at the state's largest power grid think it will perform during upcoming hot Texas summers. ERCOT and Public Utility Commission leaders updated lawmakers in Austin Wednesday morning after a striking new report issued by the grid operator. They've long known that ERCOT, the state's largest power grid, is most vulnerable on hot late-summer nights as the sun goes down. That's when the big chunk of energy generated by solar power goes offline. It gets worse if the wind goes down as well, and wind generators don't run. According to a report delivered to...