Free Republic

Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement today on Nevada’s February employment report which indicated Nevada’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5%:“Today’s Nevada employment report shows that we continue to see signs of economic growth in the Silver State. 8.5% is still a high rate of unemployment, and for this reason we need to ensure that we extend unemployment insurance for those who are struggling to make ends meet by no fault of their own. Their need is real, and next week I hope to have a final vote to extend these emergency benefits for thousands in...

A reporter has been detained by Capitol Hill police for trying to ask a question of Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy. Bloomberg BNA energy reporter Ari Natter tweeted about being detained. #transparency RT @AriNatter: I am being detained by Capital Police for trying to ask @EPAGina a question after her remarks. — nickjuliano (@nickjuliano) March 28, 2014 Natter was detained while covering the American Council On Renewable Energy conference, where McCarthy spoke. Also speaking at the conference was Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a staunch supporter of green energy who regularly takes the Senate floor to sound the...

Saving The Planet: It used to be said that socialism was the opium of the liberal intelligentsia. But now the drug of choice for the elite is environmentalism. The dirty little secret of the modern green movement is that it's become a luxury good for the uber-rich who espouse policies — from carbon taxes to renewable energy standards to closing down coal plants — that impose high costs on poor people who can least afford to pay the green tab. A Pew Research Center poll released last week offers further confirmation of this truism. It found that only two major...

The United Nations will officially warn that growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, The Telegraph can disclose. A leaked draft of a UN report condemns the widespread use of biofuels made from crops as a replacement for petrol and diesel. It says that biofuels, rather than combating the effects of global warming, could make them worse.

Cranbury, NJ (January 14, 2014) — BlackLight Power, Inc. (BLP) today announced that it has produced millions of watts of power with its breakthrough Solid Fuel-Catalyst-Induced-Hydrino-Transition (SF-CIHT) patent pending technology in its laboratories. Using a proprietary water-based solid fuel confined by two electrodes of a SF-CIHT cell, and applying a current of 12,000 amps through the fuel, water ignites into an extraordinary flash of power. The fuel can be continuously fed into the electrodes to continuously output power. BlackLight has produced millions of watts of power in a volume that is one ten thousandths of a liter corresponding to a...

Democrats have decided to lean-in, not back-away, from so-called clean energy. Despite the embarrassing history of government-funded green-energy failures, “wealthy environmentalists are pushing Democrats to take bolder positions on climate change”—and global warming, as an issue, provides the impetus for more green-energy spending. The Boston Globe reported on a recent “summit between Washington’s liberal elite and San Francisco’s climate intelligensia” that included “Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, six other senators, and … Al Gore.” The Globe points to new efforts by Democrats to “make global warming a central issue during the midterms.”

The global energy outlook has changed radically in just six years. President Obama was elected in 2008 by voters who believed we were running out of oil and gas, that climate change needed to be halted, and that renewables were the energy source of the near future. But an unexpected transformation of energy markets and politics may instead make 2014 the year of peak renewables.

The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind. It could also be the last. Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new...

Linking increased fuel economy to the larger issue of economic growth, President Obama on Tuesday directed his administration to write new rules to improve mileage for the nation’s big-rig trucks. Mr. Obama made the announcement during a speech at a suburban Maryland Safeway distribution center and cast it as the latest move in his so-called “year of action,” a time he’ll act without Congress wherever possible. “Improving gas mileage for these trucks is going to drive down our oil imports even further,” Mr. Obama said. “That reduces carbon pollution even more, cuts down on businesses’ fuel costs, which should pay...

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Ivanpah solar-power facility is controversial because it “costs about four times as much as a conventional natural-gas–fired plant but will produce far less electricity.” Once that electricity goes online, customers can expect to pay twice as much for it, if not more. No one knows for sure, because the utilities and state regulators involved haven’t disclosed that information. Oh yeah, and the plant is apparently scorching a bunch of birds to death. Over the past several months, one of the companies behind the Ivanpah plant, BrightSource Energy, has been finding “dozens” of dead...

Just as computer technology greatly expanded Americans' wealth in the 1990s, the clean energy market could do the same thing in the years ahead, Secretary of State John Kerry told the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday. He touted climate change as a societal challenge and an economic opportunity: ... "The energy market that we are staring at--that is the solution to the climate change," Kerry continued. "Energy policy is the solution to climate change. That market, my friends, is a $6-trillion market today with 4 to 5 billion users today, and it will grow to some 9 billion...

Regarding the religious debate over global warming, I am pleased to report Green Fade-Out: Europe to Ditch Climate Protection Goals. The EU's reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking -- jeopardizing Germany's touted energy revolution in the process. The climate between Brussels and Berlin is polluted, something European Commission officials attribute, among other things, to the "reckless" way German Chancellor Angela Merkel blocked stricter exhaust emissions during her re-election campaign to placate domestic automotive manufacturers like Daimler and BMW. This...

Solar electricity is growing, promoted, and most importantly, heavily subsidized. The promoters of solar electricity claim that it is close to being competitive with conventional sources of electricity. That is a fantasy. Solar electricity is expensive and impractical. If it weren't for government subsidies, some explicit and some disguised, the solar industry would collapse. The many claims of competitiveness are always based on ignoring subsidies provided to politically correct renewable power, ignoring the costs associated with unreliability, and ignoring the cost of backup fossil fuel plants. An example of a hidden subsidy is the California Renewable Portfolio Standard that mandates...

HELENA - The owner of a Montana wind farm and one of its investors are suing each other. NaturEner USA filed a lawsuit Friday in Montana's Toole County alleging breach of contract by San Diego Gas and Electric Co. It comes in response to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the California utility asking a San Diego judge to rule that NaturEner did not meet its contractual obligations. The utility says NaturEner failed to meet conditions concerning the preservation of protected birds and bats. NaturEner says the utility agreed to invest $285 million in the 189-megawatt Rim Rock wind farm and...

We have to kill eagles in order to save them. That’s now the official policy of the U.S. Interior Department. On Friday, the agency announced that it would grant some wind-energy companies permits that will allow them to kill or injure bald and golden eagles for up to 30 years without penalty. The move is an unprecedented gift to the wind-energy industry, which has been lobbying for the 30-year permit for several years. Shortly after the deal was announced, the wind-energy lobby issued a statement that would make George Orwell proud. An official with the American Wind Energy Association declared...

Socialism: Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro unveiled his big plan for socialism Monday night, just as a blackout engulfed the country. Sure, it's comical. But it's less so upon realizing that California may see the same thing. The downward slide in Caracas is becoming more of a cautionary tale than just a freak show of Stalinist communist throwbacks run wild. In California, energy officials warn that the state and others like it face a catastrophic collapse of its power grid due to the many green energy schemes that have made managing energy flow difficult. "Energy officials worry a lot these days...

Two wind farms in Wyoming, both operated by Duke Energy Corp., are currently under fire regarding the deaths of more than 150 birds between 2009 and 2013. Among the animals killed were at least 14 eagles. It is a crime to kill many of the species without a permit, which no wind energy company has yet pursued. Both the Justice Department and Fish and Wildlife Service are investigating additional bird deaths as part of a continuing investigation. The company pleaded guilty to the charges recently and has agreed to pay a $1 million fine. This marks the first time, despite...

Environmentalism: Forget Navy blue. The U.S. fleet is turning green. That might make the eco-left happy, but it'll be an unnecessary burden for taxpayers with no advantages for the military. Reports tell us that the Navy continues to "invest" in a green-fuels future, paying startups to develop fuels from algae, switchgrass, wood chips, old cooking oil, even household garbage. This program hit the high seas in the summer of 2012, when the Navy launched its Great Green Fleet demonstration. The official line said "alternative fuels, including nuclear power" were to be "used in an operational setting, fueling helicopters and jets...

A California-based solar company backed by several Obama supporters has been receiving millions in federal tax credits while losing $322 million since 2008, raising concerns about the company “becoming the next Solyndra.” Among SolarCity Corp.’s biggest investors is Elon Musk -- the high-profile donor and fundraiser who co-founded PayPal and whose companies SpaceX and electric-car company Tesla Motors have received at least $846 million in loans and startup money from the Obama administration. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, warned about SolarCity’s financial standing in a letter Monday to the Treasury Department. “There is...

The Department of Energy withheld troubling cost and performance data on a major stimulus award from a federal watchdog before the company servicing the award went bankrupt, according to a report released on Tuesday. The report focuses on the department’s handling of a pair of federal awards worth about $126 million for ECOtality, a San Francisco-based green energy company that declared bankruptcy in September. DOE’s inspector general, which authored Tuesday’s report, released an audit in July that expressed concerns about the department’s management of ECOtality’s $100 million stimulus award for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations. The report revealed...