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The Biden administration is reportedly finalizing a proposal that would force fossil fuel-fired power plants to substantially curb emissions or utilize costly carbon capture technology. The proposal — which will soon be released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — is expected to require coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to cut or capture the vast majority of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2040, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing officials briefed on a draft of the plan. The regulation, if finalized, would represent the first-ever federal action curbing power plant emissions. "EPA cannot comment because the proposals...

Three major utility companies in California are looking to restructure customer billing, and part of that means customers could be charged based on how much money they make. Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric filed a joint proposal this week for a flat-rate charge based on income. The plan would break monthly bills in two parts: The fixed-income rate, plus a reduced usage charge based on consumption. Under the proposal, it would cost as little as $15 a month for low-income households and up to $85 more per month for households making more...

Some energy experts are raising a red flag that Illinois’ transition to clean energy may prompt reliability issues. With more coal and gas plants going offline under Illinois' Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, some lawmakers are concerned of possible brownouts. During a recent Senate Energy Committee hearing, Brian Thiry, external affairs director with Reliability First Corporation, said retirements of old power sources are outpacing new power sources coming online. “As we shrink these margins, it is a reliability risk, so it is just something we need to consider. It is a risk that we are seeing and it's a risk...

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's much-delayed Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor, Europe's largest, will begin regular output on Sunday, its operator said on Saturday, boosting energy security in a region to which Russia has cut gas and power supplies. Nuclear power remains controversial in Europe, primarily due to safety concerns, and news of OL3's start-up comes as Germany on Saturday switches off its last three remaining reactors, while Sweden, France, Britain and others plan new developments. OL3's operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which is owned by Finnish utility Fortum and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, has said the unit is...

Russian occupiers are preparing a plan to evacuate [Russian collaborators and] Rosatom employees from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in the city of Enerhodar.

Residents of the U.S. Southwest could one day power their homes with solar energy generated across the border — if a multi-pronged plan from the Mexican government comes to fruition. A 120-megawatt capacity photovoltaic (PV) plant in the Sonoran seaside city of Puerto Peñasco already began feeding the national grid last month, while another 300 megawatts are expected to be online next year. “Who could have told me that a state like Sonora, a net importer of energy that has historically been a net importer, now has the potential to be an energy-exporting state?” Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo asked at...

It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes. “Wind power fails on every count,” he says, adding that governments are ignoring “overwhelming evidence” of the inadequacies of wind power, “and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis”. Professor Allison’s dire warnings...

Last summer, we looked at the collapse of the power grid in South Africa. The country which previously had the most economically stable and prosperous government in sub-Saharan Africa suffered waves of unemployment and looting as its economy buckled under the strain. They’ve managed to put together some foreign aid to apply patchwork fixes since then, but there are still rolling blackouts taking place on a regular basis. This winter, however, the power grid problems are spreading in one of the more underreported stories of the year. Zimbabwe and Nigeria are now also experiencing near-total collapses of their power grids....

The FBI arrested Sarah Beth Clendaniel of Catonsville and Brandon Russell of Orlando, Florida, last month. Federal prosecutors allege that the pair were planning to destroy five energy facilities in Norrisville, Reisterstown, Perry Hall and other parts of the Baltimore area. Clendaniel, 34, and Russell, 27, plotted to shoot up and damage the substations because they thought the attacks would “completely destroy this whole city [of Baltimore]” and cause a “cascading failure costing billions of dollars,” according to an FBI affidavit. The two were indicted Feb. 14 of a single count of conspiring to destroy an energy facility, after being...

Vermont is one of the nation’s most environmentally friendly states. But two years ago, the backers of a local wind-energy farm shelved the project after intense public opposition. An initiative supporter noted how the controversy reflected rising hostility to wind power. Whereas a decade ago, ambitious developers had planned a dozen renewable-energy projects in Vermont, by 2020, most had either folded or failed to win regulatory approval. “This is truly a sad state of affairs for Vermont,” the CEO of a green-energy firm said, while pointing out that the state has mandated that 75 percent of its power should come...

More than 450,000 Michigan locations remain without power Saturday following an ice storm that brought freezing temperatures to the state. The power-outage tracking website poweroutage.us reported that more than 470,000 customers, mostly in the southeastern part of the state where the storm hit, are experiencing outages as of Saturday morning. Wayne County, which is home to Detroit, has the most reported outages with more than 170,000, while Hillsdale County has a higher level of outages than any other county, with more than 65 percent of the 21,000 customers tracked experiencing an outage.

Got my power bill this morning from Alabama Power. They charged 15.7239¢/kWh, including riders and 4% state tax, but after subtracted flat monthly fees. That's up 20.8% percent from the February 2022 bill. If you like cheap power for charging your EV, you can keep it. Under my plan electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket. End of quote. End of line. How I calculated it: From the bill: kWh pulled from grid: 594 total bill: $109.00 From researching how fees are done: base charge: $14.50 natural disaster rider: $0.50 (added to base) state tax: 4% total base: $15.60 ($14.50 + 0.50...

I had no idea things were so desperate, and that’s after knowing what miserable shape the country is in.Car crashes, opportunistic criminals, rotting food, decomposing bodies, bankrupt businesses, and water shortages. Welcome to life under South Africa’s power blackouts.Last week the grim extent of the outages was laid bare when South Africans were advised to bury dead loved ones within four days.In a public statement, the South African Funeral Practitioners Association warned that bodies in mortuaries were rapidly decomposing because of the unrelenting electricity outages, putting huge pressure on funeral parlors struggling to process corpses.The load-shedding outages have become so...

Washington (AFP) – US authorities announced the arrests Monday of the co-founder of the notorious Atomwaffen neo-Nazi group and a woman he met online in the latest extremist plot to attack public electricity facilities.The FBI said Brandon Russell, who helped found Atomwaffen in 2015, was arrested in Florida, after spending four years in prison for possessing bomb-making materials.The woman, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, was arrested in Maryland where she had also spent time in prison for armed robbery.Guided by Russell, Clendaniel had planned to acquire a gun and to attack five electrical substations around Baltimore, Maryland, the FBI said.SNIPIn February 2022,...

Grid Down, Power Up | The DocumentaryThis documentary investigates and follows the trail of information surrounding threats that the US national power grid faces right now. Dennis Quaid hosts an alarming look into the potential of life without power. A dynamic legion of energy, economic, national security, and infrastructure experts fearlessly expose our most critical global threat: the vulnerability of our nation's power grids. Together they inform the public of imminent threats, and the infinite horrors in store from prolonged power loss. Buckle down and power up with this series of shocking scenarios. Natural disasters and weather phenomena are only...

The Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) suffered a power outage on Wednesday afternoon. The outage was brief, first reported around 2:30 p.m., then resolved within an hour – around 3:30 p.m. Most of the terminals were impacted, and operations such as TSA screenings came to a screeching halt.You cannot scan Real IDs and passports, nor can you do electronic frisking for weapons when your equipment has no power. Go figure.According to FlightAware, by 3:15, there were 140 delays and 64 cancelations. Whether these were a result of the power outage is yet to be revealed. The Los Angeles Department of...

Utility companies in the U.S. have disconnected customers an estimated 5.7 million times since 2020, according to a new report. The disconnections have come even as those companies have paid billions to shareholders and executives, according to a report published on Monday by the Center for Biological Diversity, BailoutWatch and the Energy and Policy Institute. “No one should ever have to choose between having food on the table and keeping the heat on,” Selah Goodson Bell, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program, said in a statement. “It’s inexcusable for utility executives and shareholders to profit...

PARIS—To fight President Emmanuel Macron’s pension overhaul, France’s most militant labor union is pursuing a radical strategy: cutting electricity to his political supporters and the wealthy while handing out discounted power and gas to the public. During a nationwide strike last week, members of the far-left CGT union who work in the energy sector cut power to the office of a lawmaker from Mr. Macron’s party for more than three hours. On Monday, CGT energy workers in Marseille manipulated electricity and gas meters to cut bills for bakers who were protesting in the French port city against high energy prices....

The FAIRtax- The lady doth protest too much, methinks! Today’s Chairman’s Report is written by Jade Walle. Jade is a partner of a CPA firm and is on the board of Americans For Fair Taxation. [AFFT] The FAIRtax is once again in the mainstream news given the insistence from certain lawmakers that the FAIRtax Act of 2023, H.R. 25, get a vote on the House floor. This of course will be a red-letter day for the FAIRtax because since its first introduction in 1999, it has never received a House floor vote. Until now, it has languished and died in...

The National Weather Service in Houston issued a Tornado Emergency for the first time in the office’s history Tuesday for a twister that tore the southeast side of the Houston metro area. The tornado was reported by both spotters and was confirmed by radar, according to NWS officials. Reports of tornadoes traveled east into the evening in Louisiana. Pictures and videos show the damage that was left behind. “Holy crap. I’ve got a tornado on the ground right in front of me,” said storm chaser Brad Arnold. “People are driving right into it. Hold on, it’s going to get wild.”...