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The Obama White House made an unfortunate and ungracious choice in launching a preemptive attack on Rick Perry's nomination this week. Spokesman Josh Earnest did his best deadpan as he disparaged the choice as one based on politics and not merit. But what about President Obama's appointments of Ken Salazar, Kathleen Sebelius, Tom Vilsack and Janet Napolitano? They were all lawyers without specific expertise in the issue areas of the departments they led. But each, having experience as elected Democratic statewide officials, knew enough about their respective issue areas that their status as non-experts never really mattered. Perry spent 14...

… In terms of qualifications, Mr. Perry, a former governor of Texas, doesn’t come close to his immediate predecessors. He would follow President Obama’s two energy secretaries: first, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate physicist, and then Ernest J. Moniz, a distinguished nuclear physicist from M.I.T. There are reasons the appointment of scientists to this position was and is particularly appropriate, especially now. While investment in new sources of energy (a subject on which both Mr. Chu and Mr. Moniz are experts) is a part of the energy secretary’s portfolio, by far the largest part of the department’s budget involves the...

Washington, D.C.—Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) released the following statement on President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Energy, former Texas Governor Rick Perry. “Washington state is home to one of the largest nuclear cleanup efforts in the world, so I cannot stress enough how critical it is to have strong, able leadership at the U.S. Department of Energy to guide the cleanup at Hanford. This requires a leader with a commitment to help our country fulfill its legal and moral obligation, but more importantly, a commitment to the safety of thousands of workers who show up...

Nikola One Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Semi-Truck DebutsNikola Motor Co. finally debuted its Nikola One electric semi-truck Thursday night after months of curiosity and skepticism from the long-haul freight industry. At the company’s headquarters in an industrial area on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, as suspenseful music throbbed, hundreds of guests watched chief executive Trevor Milton pull the veil off the hydrogen fuel cell big rig parked on stage. “Oh, that thing is so awesome,” the 34-year-old entrepreneur said, emotionally, once the lights went up. Guests included Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, Reps. Greg Hughes (R.) and Sue Duckworth (D.)...

Public backlash is being aimed at DC Public Schools Spokeswoman, Hilary Tone, over one of her tweets about her desire to 'abolish' all white men. On Tone's personal twitter account @HToneTastic, the schools spokesperson quoted a news story about former Texas Governor Rick Perry being named as Donald Trump’s energy secretary, department Perry said he'd eliminate back in 2012. She commented "In that case I’d like to be Secretary of White Men."

Two days after the Nov. 8 election, the Michigan Senate passed a rewrite of the state’s electric utility law that some experts say would lock this state into a regulatory scheme that President-elect Donald Trump has promised to repeal. Supporters argue that without the bill, the state could face electricity shortfalls. It is not yet known if the state House has the votes to pass the bill in the lame-duck legislative session that begins Nov. 29. The bill’s proposed regulatory arrangements are part of this state’s response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Rule.” The rule would force states...

The Energy Department said Tuesday it won't provide the names of staffers who worked on climate policy or other issues to President-elect Donald Trump's transition team, even as it pledges to cooperate with the incoming administration.

Energy: With a spate of major Cabinet picks, President-elect Donald Trump has made one thing abundantly clear: He intends to make reform of U.S. energy policy a major theme of his administration. On Tuesday word leaked out that Trump would choose former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as his new Energy Secretary. Perry, whose economic success as Texas governor speaks for itself, is a terrific pick who'll need very little on-the-job training about what plentiful energy means to real people in the real economy — especially when compared to President Obama's energy secretaries, the UC Berkeley physicist Stephen Chu, who focused...

President-Elect Donald Trump’s selection of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state indicates the next administration will be more focused on energy than perhaps any other in recent U.S. history. The choice, despite hand-wringing from Democratic critics such as former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, sends a clear signal to Congress, policymakers, and the world: Energy will be key to America’s economic growth and revival. The statement is further backed up by Trump’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. And by the fact Trump is considering former Texas Gov. Rick Perry...

The Department of Energy said Tuesday it will reject the request by President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team to name staffers who worked on climate change programs. Energy spokesman Eben Burnhan-Snyder said the agency received “significant feedback” from workers regarding a questionnaire from the transition team that leaked last week. “Some of the questions asked left many in our workforce unsettled,” Snyder said. The survey for department leadership included more than 70 questions regarding what the agency does, its workforce, costs, professional affiliations and more. But it also asked for a list of employees who worked on various climate change priorities...

It was reported last week that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team had sent the Department of Energy a list of 74 questions. In that list, the DOE was asked to provide names of employees who had worked on President Barack Obama’s climate change policy. This action brought up concerns that the incoming POTUS and his administration may be looking to not only dismantle many of the actions Obama has set forth to study and combat climate change, but to also push out federal employees and contractors who had worked on those programs. Scientists have signed petitions to call on Trump...

Major Garrett ‏@MajorCBS 38m38 minutes ago NEWS: @realDonaldTrump selects @GovernorPerry as Energy Secretary. Announcement forthcoming

News reports suggest that West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is a finalist for the job of energy secretary in the Trump administration. While Beltway insiders and the mainstream media get oddly giddy about the prospect of a politically-diverse presidential cabinet, Manchin would be a troubling pick. He has failed his constituents again and again by supporting disastrous policies, and Manchin’s brand of crony capitalism is likely to make even Bill and Hillary Clinton envious.

In the latest development on the Dakota Access Pipeline, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced that it will withhold the final easement under Lake Oahe needed to complete the project. This abrupt reversal of approval, given by the career environmental specialists, is deeply disturbing, particularly for the North Dakotans that will remain under threat of harm from protesters who will likely persist in the region for the foreseeable future. The action also sets a disconcerting precedent by an administration that appears willing to rewrite its own regulatory procedures to appease the protestors. The rule of law is the...

The Netherlands will gradually phase out subsidizes for renewable energy and shift its climate change strategy to areas such as energy saving and carbon capture, the government said on Wednesday. A week ago, the Netherlands announced a 33 percent increase in subsidies for solar, wind, geothermal and other projects to 12 billion euros ($12.9 billion) in 2017, from 9 billion euros in 2016, as it struggles to reach 2020 targets. But the "Energy Agenda" published by the Economic Affairs ministry on Wednesday - setting out how greenhouse gas emissions can be cut to 80-95 percent of 1990 levels by 2050...

Last year, Germany completed and turned on the Wendelstein 7-X nuclear fusion reactor. This amazing piece of technology uses a complicated design called a stellerator, and scientists have finally managed to verify that the design works like it's supposed to.

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

The standard design of fusion reactor is called the tokamak reactor, and it involves a ring of magnets that force the nuclear material to travel in a large circle. The stellerator design used by the W7-X reactor adds several twists to the ring to increase stability. However, the stellerator design is still relatively untested, so a group of researchers spent the past year studying the W7-X reactor to ensure that it was working the way it was supposed to. They found an incredibly small error rate, less than 1 in 100,000, which the researchers characterized as "unprecedented accuracy." This is...

Simply put, the numbers are stunning: In Allegheny County, Pa., alone, estimates of “totally technically recoverable reserves” of shale natural gas exceed 150 trillion cubic feet. “This is nearly five times the minimum required for classification as a super-giant gas field and enough natural gas to provide all of America’s needs for more than five years,” recently wrote Gregory Wrightstone and Justin Skaggs in Oil and Gas Investor. Wrightstone, a petroleum geologist/consultant at Wrightstone Energy Consulting in Allison Park, Pa., and Skaggs, a geologist with Pin Oak Energy Partners in Akron, Ohio, say at today’s depressed market prices, “the...

Three windmill-like turbines loom motionless over the city of Port Angeles’ new Waterfront Park. The $107,516 spires stand immobile more than two months after they were erected and more than a year after the city council approved them. Once they are working to generate electricity, they will produce so little power — $1.50 worth of electricity a month in savings — that at least one council member is regretting her decision to purchase them. They have not been activated because the city is involved in an inspection-related dispute with the manufacturer, UGE International Ltd. of New York City, Community and...