Free Republic

“Lack of transparency was really critical to getting it passed,” former Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber explained. The Democrats cleverly exploited the American voters’ “lack of economic understanding.” Now President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is using secretive, duplicitous science, and exploiting people’s lack of scientific understanding, to impose punitive regulations cleverly labeled the “clean power plan.” The agency claims the clean power plan will prevent “dangerous manmade climate change” by reducing carbon dioxide and “encouraging” greater use of renewable energy. Its real goal is forcing coal-fired power plants to reduce operations significantly or shut down entirely. The EPA also claims that...

The closure of Japan's nuclear power plants following the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami increased fossil fuel consumption and led to a wave of new coal plant construction. Japan plans to build 28 new coal-fired power generation units with total capacity of as much as 14,800 megawatts, due to come online in the next decade or so. Total = 28 units 13,801-14,801 megawatts. Individual plants and start dates excepted

The costs of solar energy are plummeting, and now are about on par with the electricity generated at big power plants. This new reality intensifies a long-running business and regulatory battle, between the mainline electric utility companies and newer firms that provide solar systems for homeowners' rooftops. Sometimes the rivalry looks more like hardball politics than marketplace economics. The way rooftop solar typically works, the homeowner leases rooftop panels from a company that owns and installs them. It can be an expensive proposition, but the homeowner saves some money by drawing less power from the utility company's electric plants, and...

EPA’s proposed guidelines for carbon dioxide (CO2)emissions from existing stationary sources are fatally flawed. The rule violates the language of the Clean Air Act; it arbitrarily and capriciously imposes emission reduction goals with no analysis from EPA on the actual warming impacts; it is not supported by the American people nor Congress; it will drive up electricity prices; and it will threaten the stability of the electricity grid. EPA fails to note that in exchange for higher electricity rates, the benefit of this rule is that the world is expected to be 0.018 degrees Celsius cooler than otherwise by 2100....

After four years of battle with opponents of safe, economical nuclear energy -basically same dummies closing down our coal industry (Obama, Reid, et. al.)- the large federal nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada was recently deemed 'safe' by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission... so why not get going with that, then? Nuclear energy is simply wonderful in my view, and only real green kooks like the German left are walking away from it. Not even the tsunami disaster at Fukushima, Japan has scared them away from utilizing it... Tokyo knows the 1964, single-walled reactors were outdated and risky, and unlike anything you'd...

Researchers have converted 40 percent of sunlight hitting a solar cell into electricity, which is the highest efficiency ever reported. The achievement was made using focused sunlight, and could have implications in photovoltaic power, the University of New South Wales reported. "This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity," said UNSW Scientia Professor and Director of the Advanced Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) Professor Martin Green. "We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry," added Mark Keevers, the UNSW solar scientist who managed...

Ever since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its Clean Power Plan proposal this past June, a number of analyses have been conducted to try and determine the total cost of the regulation to electricity consumers. A report released this morning by Energy Ventures Analysis (EVA), however, goes a step further. In addition to the Clean Power Plan, EPA has recently finalized, proposed, or will soon propose a slew of environmental regulations affecting the electric power sector. These include new National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone and particulate matter, the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) to...

... heated fight for a seat on Louisiana's Public Service Commission (PSC) is still going strong. December runoff between PSC chairman Eric Skrmetta and alternative energy advocate Forest Bradley-Wright.

Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) pledged on “Fox News Sunday” to be “extremely aggressive” in trying to rollback some regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency. “Extremely aggressive,” she said when asked how aggressive she would be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations. “That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. “We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job,...

When Don Sage of Concord, N.H., learned his electric bill could rise by as much as $40 a month he got flustered. He and his wife make do on a bit less than $30,000 a year in Social Security payments, and they pay close attention to their electric bills. "When the invoice comes in the mail to get paid, I have a target amount that we can fluctuate up or down, based on our fixed budget," Sage says. "They don't need my permission to hike up their rates, but the fact is we're the ones that are paying these increases."...

Bowie Resource Partners says it has eliminated 150 jobs at the Bowie #2 coal mine near Paonia. ... Last year the shutdown of another mine in the region caused nearly 300 people to lose their jobs. That coal mine is in Somerset. In the release, Bowie says it will provide the 150 laid off workers with 60 days of wages and benefits.

The 40-foot green machines, which as prototypes are priced at about $1 million each, are made by New Flyer Industries. The all-electric propulsion system was built by Siemens. Regular diesel-powered buses cost $400,000 to $500,000 each, and diesel-electric hybrid buses cost about $700,000, according to the CTA. CTA officials estimated the electric buses will reduce energy costs by more than $25,000 a year per bus, or roughly $300,000 over the average 12-year bus life span. The electric bus demonstration project is funded by a $2.2 million grant received in 2011 from the Federal Transit Administration, plus about $300,000 in congestion...

Following a two-year hiatus, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has resumed issuing license renewals for nuclear power plants. On October 20, the NRC renewed the operating licenses for Limerick Generating Station Units 1 and 2, located northwest of Philadelphia, extending their license expiration dates by 20 years, to 2044 and 2049, respectively. With this action, the NRC has granted license renewals providing a 20-year extension to a total of 74 of the 100 operating reactors in the United States. Nuclear power accounted for 20% of total power sector electricity generation in 2013. NRC has the authority to issue initial...

In early 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that "under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Obama was referring to his plan to cap greenhouse-gas emissions, which would, among other things, effectively choke off coal as an energy source. He was just as fond of high gasoline prices, telling CNBC in June 2008 — as gas prices shot up to $4 a gallon — that he "would have preferred a gradual adjustment." Six years later, and Obama has succeeded.

A new HVDC line will let Europe store more wind energy in Norway’s hydropower system Norway’s hydropower reservoirs make up nearly half of Europe’s energy storage capacity. European grid operators need energy storage to cope with an ever-mounting, always-shifting torrent of wind power. See the connection? So does Norway. In December, engineers will energize a new subsea power cable that will begin to bridge the gap between need and opportunity, greatly expanding European power systems’ access to Norway’s hydropower-rich power grid. The 240-kilometer cable across the Skagerrak Strait separating southern Norway and northern Denmark is Norway’s first new power link...

A new kind of solar cell could store electrical energy without any help from traditional batteries, according to a new study. Researchers at Ohio State University, in Columbus, have developed what they're calling the world's first solar battery — a hybrid device that combines the energy-capturing abilities of a solar cell with the energy-storing capabilities of a battery. The new cell could lower the cost of harvesting renewable energy from the sun by as much as 25 percent, according to the researchers. [Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas] The key to the device's success is a mesh solar panel that allows...

In case you were too consumed with Ebola news yesterday to notice this, here’s a belated FYI that America’s going to put the Middle East’s oil barons out of business before your grandkids are out of college. Assuming the Ebola doesn’t get us first, I mean. Lockheed has a webpage dedicated to its new breakthrough in compact fusion reactors but this write-up in Aviation Week is the most thorough explanation I’ve seen of how it would actually work. If I understand it correctly, which I probably don’t, the problem with current fusion reactors is that they’re too darned big and...

Anaheim is literally pulling the plug on pot shops that keep popping up despite a law forbidding the businesses. Officials have used its operation of utilities to cut off water and power to dispensaries in the city that’s home to Disneyland, the Orange County Register reported Tuesday. …

Startup Alphabet Energy has its first product: what it says is the world’s largest thermoelectric generator. Power plants waste huge amounts of energy as heat—about 40 to 80 percent of the total in the fuel they burn. A new device could reduce that waste, cutting fuel consumption and carbon emissions by as much as 3 percent and saving companies millions of dollars. (Three percent might not seem like much, but for context, air travel accounts for 2 percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.) The generator makes use of a novel, highly efficient thermoelectric material discovered recently at the University of...

(CNSNews.com) – Power plants generating 72 gigawatts (GW) of electricity in 37 states have either closed or are scheduled to shut their doors to comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, according to the Institute for Energy Research (IER). The loss of generating capacity is “over seven times the amount originally predicted by EPA modeling,” IER’s updated report, released October 7, noted. “Originally, EPA calculated that only 9.5 GW of electrical generating capacity would close as a result of its MATS (Mercury and Air Toxics Standard) and CSAPR (Cross State Air Pollution Rule) rules,” the report stated. “Before President Obama’s...