Free Republic

Samples of the new hybrid sol-gel material are shown placed on a clear plastic substrate for testing. Credit: John Toon, Georgia Tech ================================================================================================================= Using a hybrid silica sol-gel material and self-assembled monolayers of a common fatty acid, researchers have developed a new capacitor dielectric material that provides an electrical energy storage capacity rivaling certain batteries, with both a high energy density and high power density. If the material can be scaled up from laboratory samples, devices made from it could surpass traditional electrolytic capacitors for applications in electromagnetic propulsion, electric vehicles and defibrillators. Capacitors often complement batteries in these applications...

President Obama argues that his policies will result in cleaner air and will mitigate the effects of climate change, but unintended consequences of the administration’s environmental agenda seem all but certain — possibly even including higher mortality rates across the country, according to at least one scholar.Key pieces of Mr. Obama’s environmental plan, including proposals to increase ozone standards, limit carbon emissions from power plants and continue mandating more ethanol in U.S. gasoline supplies, will bring with them serious side effects in the coming months and years, critics and some analysts say.Those effects could include higher electricity rates and the...

Craig community leaders hosted a meeting Thursday at Moffat County High School to provide a brief update on the situation at Colowyo Coal Mine, answer questions and facilitate public comment on the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s environmental assessment. Ray Beck, Craig mayor, opened the gathering by telling the audience about the economic significance of Colowyo mine’s 220 jobs to Craig and Northwest Colorado. “This is not the time to slow down,” Beck said, emphasizing the importance of community feedback on the development of the mine’s new environmental assessment. When the OMSRE’s recommendation to approve mining plans for...

It was so hot Wednesday that City Hall issued a 24-hour heat advisory warning people to stay indoors — but officials also cautioned against blasting the A/C. New Yorkers should keep their air conditioners at 78 degrees to help reduce the risk of blackouts, Mayor de Blasio said. “If the air conditioning is set at 78 degrees, people are safe and they will be able to deal with the hot temperatures,” he said. A 75-degree setting uses 18% more electricity, and a 72-degree setting uses 39% more, he said. The city’s fragile power grid was already showing signs of strain...

You can take any Obama policy and boil it down to "Billions wasted" and "ultimately unsuccessful". One of his lesser known plans involved electrifying Africa. You can guess how that went. When President Barack Obama made his first presidential visit to Kenya over the weekend, he visited not just his ancestral home, but one of the target countries in his $7 billion signature foreign aid initiative, Power Africa. Launched in 2013, Power Africa aims to boost electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative has prioritized expanding the continent’s capacity to generate electricity, with an additional focus on small-scale renewable...

Thieves fry Kenya's power grid for fast food Vandals smash electrical transformers to steal viscous fluid that's later sold as cooking oil for roadside stalls. Nairobi, Kenya - The morning scene is increasingly routine for Kenyans. When it's time to start the day, the power is already out. Somewhere nearby, the shell of a wrecked electrical transformer lies on its side underneath the pole where it had been fixed seven metres off the ground. The culprit is an unusual one: A vandal who is selling the toxic oil, drawn from the transformer, to chefs who use it for frying food...

Republicans are investigating what they call "improper influence" from a national green group on the Obama administration's signature Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change regulation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are demanding the EPA and the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) hand over documents on the organization's involvement in drafting the proposed carbon pollution rules. The investigation is based on a New York Times ' report that said the NRDC provided the blueprint used for the rules, and "heavily influenced the president's proposal." While...

When the Green Mountain power company, Vermont’s largest utility, announced earlier this year it will be buying nuclear power from New Hampshire’s Seabrook reactor, many environmentalists felt betrayed. “This is exactly why we closed Vermont Yankee, because we didn’t want any nuclear power,” they complained. But consumer demands left Green Mountain with no other choice. Nuclear is the ultimate reliable source of power – reactors operate more than 90 percent of the time – and Green Mountain needs back-up in case other sources stop working or if demand exceeds supply on a hot summer day. Vermont is struggling with its...

Though a relatively small organization with only 26 people on staff, WildEarth Guardians’ litigious nature has established the environmental advocacy group as a dominant voice in the national debate about environmental policy. From 2010 to present, Guardians have initiated a total of 152 cases in federal district courts and 55 in the Circuit Court of Appeals for a total of 207 cases. In 2010 alone they filed 61 claims — an average of about one per week. However, Guardians’ pervasiveness in the courts has not gone without criticism. In a 2012 analysis of WildEarth Guardians' legal activity, the conservative group...

<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>

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...

Are electric cars damaging YOUR region? Maps reveal how EVs can be WORSE for the environment than gas-guzzling vehicles In some areas, mostly in the east of the US, the impact of charging up EVs does more harm to the environment In monetary terms, electric cars are about half-a-cent worse per mile for the environment than gas-powered cars With gas cars, the worst damage to the environment, shown in red, took place in highly-populated urban areas They have been hailed as the environmentally-friendly solution to getting around towns and cities. But new research has found electric cars have an overall...

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...

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...

Today the FCC voted in favor of updating its Lifeline program to include broadband. This would mean that households surviving on low incomes would be able to receive help paying for a broadband connection. It might not be as important as electricity or water, but having a broadband connection is seen as being all but essential these days. From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working, the ability to get online is seen as so vital by some that there have been calls for it to be classed as a utility. The Lifeline program has been...

New Hampshire utility ratepayers will pay a Taiwanese company $1.22 million to build the state’s largest solar installation so that a small town can save about $500,000 in power costs over the life of the project. Taiwan’s Walsin Lihwa, parent company of Borrego Solar, will use Chinese-made solar panels in the 3.5-acre project, which is supposed to be finished in July. It will supply power to several municipal buildings in the area but only some of the time: the town of Peterborough (population: 6,284) gets only 197 sunny days per year. “What a great project,” deadpanned David Kreutzer, a senior...

The cause of an early morning fire north of San Diego was an electrocuted bird falling from an active power lineA bird carrying a snake in its talons struck power lines north of San Diego, sparking a hillside fire just west of The Merge. San Diego Police arrived to the location on Dunhill Street near the intersection of Interstates 5 and 805 just before 6 a.m. Flames were burning very close to businesses including the General Atomics building, officials said. Officers called in San Diego Fire-Rescue crews who contained the fire within an hour. Fire officials initially told NBC 7...