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Some coal and gas power stations in Britain were paid double the price of exchange-traded electricity to help plug a gap left by a drop in wind generation on Monday. Britain is set to end the use of coal within three years and make power generation free of fossil fuel by 2035. But for now it falls back on high-emission coal when wind drops or demand increases. Wind generation on Monday was meeting just 6% of total demand, National Grid data show, while gas contributed 55% and coal 2%. It’s Finally Getting Cold and Europe Doesn’t Have Enough Gas U.K....

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it. Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives. All of which begs the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste? Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue...

The solar-energy industry has been touted for years as the environmentally safe alternative. After all, solar panels merely absorb the sun’s energy and transfer it to consumers. No oily pipelines, no obstructions to the nation’s waterways. But it appears all is not well for fans of the industry. Discarded solar panels, piling up around the world, are detrimental to the environment, according to a new study by Environmental Progress. And carcinogenic. And teratogenic. While environmentalist have warned for decades of the hazard of nuclear power, solar panels produce 300 times more toxic waste per unity of energy than nuclear power...

The Obama administration's war on coal claimed its most significant victim as Peabody Coal, the largest private coal company in the world, filed for bankruptcy today, citing several factors, including "ongoging regulatory challenges."

Even $1.5 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees can’t save a “clean” energy company from bankruptcy. That’s the takeaway from the looming failure of SunEdison, a company that touts itself as the “largest global renewable energy development company.” Once a darling of Wall Street and the green Left because of SunEdison’s portfolio of wind and solar projects, the company’s stock is now in free fall. Furthermore, two related companies that were spun off from SunEdison — TerraForm Global and TerraForm Power — also appear to be in financial distress. On March 30, Brian Wuebbels, the CEO of both TerraForm companies,...

SunEdison, which bills itself as the world’s largest green energy company, may soon file for bankruptcy protection, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, as the company faces “liquidity difficulties” despite getting millions in government subsidies.

A federally backed, $2.2 billion solar project in the California desert isn’t producing the electricity it is contractually required to deliver to PG&E Corp., which says the solar plant may be forced to shut down if it doesn’t receive a break Thursday from state regulators. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, owned by BrightSource Energy Inc., NRG Energy Inc. NRG, -1.72% and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG, -0.37% GOOGL, -0.54% Google, uses more than 170,000 mirrors mounted to the ground to reflect sunlight to 450-foot-high towers topped by boilers that heat up to create steam, which in turn is used to generate...

When someone makes a promise that seems too good to be true: like saying you’ll be “stinkin’, filthy rich” if you invest in their green energy technology, it’s a good idea to look into that proposition with a little more scrutiny. That kind of attractive, yet ultimately worthless deal cost consumers nearly $54.5 million, federal prosecutors say. The Department of Justice announced today that federal prosecutors filed fraud and conspiracy charges against the three co-founders of Pennsylvania-based Mantria Corporation for their part in bilking millions of dollars from unsuspecting consumers. Under the scheme, from 2005 to 2009 the group encouraged...

An Inspector General of the Department of Energy report that picked over the bones of the Solyndra green energy fiasco placed most of the blame on Solyndra executives for losing more than $500 million in taxpayer money. But a close reading shows DOE made plenty of mistakes as well. The report authored by DOE Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman came just short of calling Solyndra’s highest officials liars, saying their actions during the loan process were “at best, reckless and irresponsible or, at worst, an orchestrated effort to knowingly and intentionally deceive and mislead the Department.” While the 13-page report...

A four-year investigation has concluded that officials of the solar company Solyndra misrepresented facts and omitted key information in their efforts to get a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. government. Solyndra was the first company to get federal loan guarantees under a program that was created in 2005 and expanded by President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package. The company’s failure soon after receiving the loan guarantee likely will cost taxpayers more than $500 million. Republicans and other critics cite it as an example of wasteful spending under the stimulus program. The report by the Energy Department’s inspector...

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...

Not surprisingly, a wind farm operator is at the center of Germany’s latest major financial swindle. With 1,300 employees, Prokon is a relatively small company. Yet its advertisements were well-known to Germans. They always had three parts: pictures of a wind farm; a vague message that “something” had to be “changed”; and a request to make a loan to Prokon. In return, one was promised nothing less than “a future worth living,” and 8 percent interest per annum. One of these propositions must have been alluring to many Germans, for the company successfully gathered about 1.3 billion euros (2 billion...

David Rose of the Mail on Sunday tears the BBC a new one, thanks to an “amateur climate blogger”. Pensioner forces BBC to lift veil on 2006 eco-seminar to top executivesPapers reveal influence of top green campaigners including GreenpeaceThen-head of news Helen Boaden said it impacted a ‘broad range of output’Yet BBC has spent more than £20,000 in legal fees trying to keep it secret The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming,  The Mail on Sunday can reveal.The controversial...

More than nine out of every ten employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are considered "non-essential" and have been furloughed in the federal government's shutdown. Reuters obtained an EPA guidance in which the agency said it would "classify 1,069 employees, out of 16,205, as essential,"...

A federal proposal to impose strict new rules on emissions from new coal-fired plants has drawn the ire of critics who are determined to stop regulatory effort from affecting coal-producing states such as Colorado. Last Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule for new coal plants: large plants can emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour while smaller plants can emit the slightly higher figure of 1,100 pounds. ... war on coal... Shovel-ready jobs apparently don’t apply to those who work in coal,” Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) quipped, referring to President Obama’s description...

Events have failed to fulfill the prophecy. Preachers have suddenly been struck dumb by uncertainty. Believers are understandably nervous and some, under their breath, are abandoning the dogma. These sentences could have been written at the end of the day on October 22, 1844, about the Millerites, a religious sect started in upstate New York. Preachers had told their followers that Jesus would return to earth that day. He failed to show. But the subject here is not Millerism, but another kind of religious faith: the faith of the global-warming alarmists. And while it’s not likely to have the impact...

SACRAMENTO — California authorities have arrested five people who allegedly bought bottles and cans from recycling centers in Nevada and then redeemed them for cash in California, the California Department of Justice said Thursday. The suspects were charged with conspiracy, grand theft and recycling fraud as part of the scheme valued at more than $300,000, officials said. The five arrested — Gerardo Gomez-Vasquez, Magdalena Hernandez-Sebastian, Luis Aguirre-Alacon, Ludin Rosales-Valladares and Elfego Gonzalez-Ramos — are Nevada residents. Authorities say a sixth man, Argelio Hernandez-Torres, remains at large.

On Friday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivers its latest verdict on the state of man-made global warming. Though the details are a secret, one thing is clear: the version of events you will see and hear in much of the media, especially from partis pris organisations like the BBC, will be the opposite of what the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report actually says. Already we have had a taste of the nonsense to come: a pre-announcement to the effect that “climate scientists” are now “95 per cent certain” that humans are to blame for climate change; an evidence-free declaration...

Germany is committing slow economic suicide. It has staked its future on heavy industry and manufacturing, yet has no energy policy to back this up. Instead, the country has a ruinously expensive green dream, priced at €700bn (£590bn) from now until the late 2030s...(snip) The likelihood is that Germany will start to lose its economic halo soon, “de-rated” like others before it... Chancellor Angela Merkel tied a deadweight around the ankles of her country when she suddenly - and flippantly - abandoned her nuclear policy after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011. “This has forever changed the way we define risk,”...

The false "hockeystick" graph with which (in 2001) the UN climate panel claimed that current surface temperatures are "unprecedented" in a millennium is at odds with hundreds of scientific papers and with their own previous position.  There is nothing unusual about today's temperatures; the world was warmer in the Middle Ages.  However, the "hockeystick" graph showing a rapid increase in 20th century CO2 concentration is genuine. The Third Assessment Report (2001) of the UN-sponsored IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) espouses a temperature history over the last thousand years that resembles a 'hockeystick' (HS).  The 'shank' is the smooth decline...