Free Republic

BERLIN - A German court ruled on Thursday that Tesla Inc can continue to clear forest near the capital Berlin to build its first European car and battery factory, in a defeat for local environmental activists. The court said in a statement it had rejected urgent applications to stop the land being cleared of trees from several environmental groups, adding its ruling was final. It had temporarily halted the tree felling earlier this month. The U.S. electric carmaker announced plans last November to build a Gigafactory in Gruenheide.

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ7)-- Norfolk Southern has announced the closure of its Roanoke Distribution Center, and says work associated with its Roanoke Locomotive Shop (East End) will move to Altoona, Pennsylvania. The plan is for employees at the Roanoke Distribution Center to continue working through about April 18, 2020, and those at the Roanoke Locomotive Shop will work until about May 18, 2020. The company says all roughly 85 mechanical workers will be offered the opportunity to relocate to the Juniata Locomotive Shop and continue their employment with Norfolk Southern. Nineteen clerical positions are being eliminated. The company says it will...

The massacre happened in Uruapan, in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, on Monday, according to the state’s attorney general’s office. Four people walked into the amusement arcade, asked questions of some patrons and began firing with military-grade weapons, the attorney general’s office said in a statement. The attackers were apparently searching for specific targets, but then opened fire indiscriminately on customers, the Associated Press reported.

Just beyond the windows of Satsuki Kanno’s apartment overlooking Tokyo Bay, a behemoth from a bygone era will soon rise: a coal-burning power plant, part of a buildup of coal power that is unheard-of for an advanced economy. It is one unintended consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster almost a decade ago, which forced Japan to all but close its nuclear power program. Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants — one of the dirtiest sources of electricity — at 17 different sites in the next five years, just at a time when the...

Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas. Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it. Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are...

Larry Fink’s recent letters to CEOs and investors were certain to press buttons, because they dealt with BlackRock’s plans to address climate change. Yet the reactions, Fink tells Barron’s, have been positive even as climate change has become a political football. “I received one of the great letters of my career from a client in a red state,” says the CEO of BlackRock (ticker: BLK). “This client was very thankful. This client said, ‘We have a 10- to 20-year investment horizon. We now need to look at how we think about investing.’ ” BlackRock puts climate-risk analysis at the heart...

Germany announced on Thursday that it would spend $44.5 billion to quit coal — but not for another 18 years, by 2038. The move shows how expensive it is to stop burning the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, despite a broad consensus that keeping coal in the ground is vital to averting a climate crisis, and how politically complicated it is. Coal, when burned, produces huge amounts of the greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for global warming. Germany doesn’t have shale gas, as the United States does, which has led to the rapid decline of coal use in America, despite...

U.S. coal-fired power plants shut down at the second-fastest pace on record in 2019, despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to prop up the industry, according to data from the federal government and Thomson Reuters. Power companies retired or converted roughly 15,100 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired electricity generation, enough to power about 15 million homes, according to the data, which included preliminary statistics from the Energy Information Administration and Reuters reporting. That was second only to the record 19,300 MW shut in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration. The replacement of coal with power generation from natural gas and renewables has...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association announced Thursday that it will shut down its 253 megawatt coal-fired generating station near Grants by the end of 2020 as part of the wholesale electric supplier’s efforts to transition to a clean energy grid over the next decade. The closure will eliminate 107 jobs at the plant, and potentially scores more at a nearby coal mine that supplies fuel for the generating station. Escalante was built to operate through 2045, but Tri-State is closing it 25 years early as part of a broad plan to eliminate all of the association’s coal-fired...

Climate crusaders are failing to persuade voters to limit fossil fuels, but they’re turning to coercion by other means. They’re having some success with U.S. banks and insurers that are caving to pressure to divest from carbon energy. The Hartford insurance group last month announced it will no longer insure or invest in companies that generate more than 25% of their revenues from coal mining or more than 25% of their energy from coal. It will also black-list companies that generate more than a quarter of their revenues from drilling in Canada’s Alberta oil sands. “As an insurer and asset...

God only knows where Biden got the idea that coal mining consists of throwing the stuff into a furnace. That’s not how it works, but I digress. Biden’s recommendation is stale stuff. It’s the kind of rhetoric that will only sway voters whose ideal president is a machine that spits out a white paper from 1998 every time someone pushes a button. Re-training programs for workers in precarious industries have been with us for a long time.So has a specific fixation on the tech industry, as though it’s a cure-all for rural poverty. But 1998 was a long time ago....

Saagar Enjeti argues why Joe Biden is still falling into the same trap Hillary Clinton fell into during the 2016 election.

Whitney Wickes, who recently moved her Rocking WW Minerals company from Colorado to Sheridan, has been named one of Forbes Magazine's list of top "30 Under 30" entrepreneurs. There is a “healthy” number of people focused on renewable energy in the U.S., but few who are dedicated to improving sustainability on the fossil fuel side, Whitney Wickes said. Wickes, Rocking WW Minerals co-founder and recent Sheridan transplant, was named to Forbes 30 under 30 top entrepreneurs for 2020 in the energy sector this month. Wickes was contacted as one of 20,000 nominees throughout 16 industries in October and asked to...

America’s energy sources, like booming oil and crumbling coal, have defied projections and historical precedents over the last decade. ... unexpectedly, ... In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that in 2019, the U.S. would be producing about six million barrels of oil a day. The reality? We're now producing 12 million barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, EIA projected oil prices would be more than $100 a barrel. They're currently hovering around $60 a barrel. What’s happening: A pair of extraction methods — horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — have unlocked far more oil and gas than experts...

China’s efforts to wean itself off coal are losing steam, as the world’s biggest carbon emitter is putting economic growth and energy security above its ambitions to be a leader in combating climate change. Coal consumption is back near peak levels after rebounding over the past three years, despite China’s pledges to make steep cuts in what is the country’s most prevalent and polluting source of energy. The country is building more coal-fired plant capacity than the rest of the world combined. Infrastructure stimulus measures to offset the impact of the prolonged trade war with the U.S. have boosted consumption,...

Experts horrified at large-scale forest removal to meet wood pellet demand Plans to shift Europe’s coal plants to burning wood pellets instead could accelerate rather than combat the climate crisis and lay waste to woodland equal to half the size of Germany’s Black Forest a year, according to campaigners...(snip) ...Alex Mason, from WWF’s EU office, said burning forests was “literally the opposite of what we should be doing” to help tackle the climate crisis. “As 800 scientists pointed out last year, converting coal plants to biomass will increase emissions for decades, if not centuries. "

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. said Friday that it will no longer insure or invest in companies that generate more than 25% of their revenue from thermal coal mining, or more than 25% of their energy production from coal. *snip* "The world needs affordable, accessible energy to support global economic progress and, at the same time, action is needed to mitigate the impact such activity has on our climate," said Chief Executive Christopher Swift.

In western Massachusetts, a group of a dozen or so climate activists tried to stop a trainload of coal heading for a power plant in New Hampshire…by standing on the railroad tracks in front of the train. Evidently they thought the train could, and would, screech to a halt. This short video is dark and doesn’t show much, but it conveys some sense of why this was a poor idea:

Greenpeace congratulated China and the EU by contrasting it with Trump’s refusal to commit the United States to the Paris climate accord: “What gets the pair together isn't just Trump – China and the EU understand the opportunities offered by a clean and climate-safe world.” Oops! Hold your horses! All bets are off! According to a BBC news headline d/d November 20, 2019: “Climate Change: China Coal Surge Threatens Paris Targets.” Astonishingly, over the past 18 months China has added enough new coal-based electricity generation (43GW) to power 31 million homes. King coal has returned. Not only, China is also...

China also has another 121.3 GW of coal-fired power plants under construction, U.S.-based research network Global Energy Monitor said in its report, nearly enough to power the whole of France. The increase followed a 2014-2016 “permitting surge” by local governments aiming to boost growth while formerly suspended projects have also been restarted, Global Energy Monitor said. In the rest of the world, coal-fired power capacity fell 8.1 GW over the same period. To cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, China has promised an “energy revolution” aimed at dramatically reducing its reliance on coal. It cut coal’s share of the country’s...