Column: Limits on wind, solar are hurting Ohio far...

Ohio is an agriculture state. Family farms often span generations. In places like Paulding County, farmland sustains soybeans, corn, hogs, cattle and wheat. In recent years, a new cash crop has taken root alongside this more traditional harvest: clean energy. The agriculture community has turned to solar and wind energy to supplement traditional farm income. Solar arrays can power an energy-intensive hog barn and other...

Positioning for a low-carbon future, utilities rel...

Positioning for a low-carbon future, utilities rely on gas, coal in near term Executives from some of the largest U.S. electric utilities and power providers said they will continue to rely on fossil fuels, including coal, well into the next decade as they position themselves for a low-carbon future. “There’s no question that at certain times of the year, the fossil generation fleet is what carries the...

Carbon Emissions Rise to Highest Level in at Least...

It is a record we do not want. It is a record of political failure. It is a record based on the politics of climate denial. We have crossed another climate threshold that, yet again, signals we are in deep trouble. We are now experiencing levels of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, that the earth has not experienced for three to five million years. We are walking – more like stumbling with stupidity – into the...

South Euclid, OH council considers resolution sett...

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio — City Council heard the first reading Monday (Nov. 25) of a resolution that establishes a goal for the city’s government to use 100 percent clean energy by 2025 and a goal for the community as whole to be doing the same by 2035. The resolution’s language states that 139 U.S. cities, including Cleveland and Cincinnati, have already adopted 100 percent clean energy goals, and six U.S. cities have...

Corporate Leaders to Trump: Withdrawing From the P...

President Trump says fulfilling the country’s commitment to the Paris climate agreement would be bad news for the U.S. economy, but the growing tally of business leaders pledging to take action anyway suggests otherwise. These businesspeople understand that while climate action costs money, climate change costs far more. More than 2,200 businesses and investors have signed on to the “We Are Still In” pledge...

UN report: Pollution from planned fossil fuel prod...

To protect the climate, most coal, oil, and natural gas must be left in the ground, a recent study reported.   In the 2015 international Paris Climate Agreement, nearly every country [see editor’s note] agreed to try and limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and preferably closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures. Achieving these...

Stop the Ethanol Madness

The mainstay of the Renewable Fuel Standard is an unmistakable social and environmental failure. Why does it persist? The idea of requiring the nation’s gasoline supply to contain a certain amount of renewable biofuel was born in a short-lived doomsday fad of the 1970s. With experts warning that the world was quickly running out of oil, the shocks of ’73 and ’79 led President Jimmy Carter to call for wartime-style rationing...

California Ramps up Fossil Fuel Fight With Ban on ...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed new restrictions on oil exploration in his state yesterday by putting a moratorium on hundreds hydraulic fracturing permits until the projects are reviewed by independent scientists, as the AP reported. His mandate also banned new wells from being drilled using a new method that employs a high-pressure cyclic steaming process. Regulators believe that process led to an oil leak that...

‘Sheer Madness’: Coal Surges in China,...

While most of the world is reducing its dependence on coal-fired power because of the enormous amount of greenhouse gases associated with it, China raised its coal fired capacity over 2018 and half of 2019, according to a new study. Over the 18-month period that ended in June, China bucked the international trend and raised its coal-fired power capacity 42.9 gigawatts (GW), or about 4.5 percent, while connecting new coal...

Money changes everything

Climate activists briefly shut down Chase branch over tar sands support. Local activists working to head off catastrophic climate change are trying a new tactic: following the money. On Nov. 9, members from 350 Madison Climate Action Team marched into the Sauk Creek Chase Bank branch on Madison’s west side, sat down on the floor of the lobby and began calling out for divestment of fossil fuel infrastructure. The group...

Unfamiliar Ground: Bracing for Climate Impacts in ...

Reporters from across the Midwest explore the climate risks and the strategies communities are using to adapt. Think of a Minnesota with almost no ice fishing. A Missouri that is as hot and dry as Texas. River and lake communities where catastrophic flooding happens almost every year, rather than every few generations. This, scientists warn, is the future of the Midwest if emissions continue at a high rate, threatening the...

The truth about the shale oil and gas industry ...

1.9 million. 13 trillion. 10 billion. These are the numbers that jumped off the page when I read Post Carbon Institute’s Fellow David Hughes’s latest “shale reality check” report on the U.S. government’s forecasts of domestic oil and gas production. To elaborate, these forecasts mean that by 2050: 1.9 million new oil and gas wells will need to be drilled; $13 trillion will need to be spent to drill all those wells; and...

How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong

Ed note:  go to link to see illustrations and figures:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/sunday/science-climate-change.html?auth=login-email&fbclid=IwAR12CQLLF8964V10317laAcqPHHMcFtvmepXHpWgFA8cbyQgVZSekxp5IIY&login=email&smid=nytcore-ios-share Few thought it would arrive so quickly. Now we’re facing consequences once viewed as fringe scenarios. Transit workers pumped water out of the South Ferry subway...

Natural Gas Fracking Boom Turns Bust For Big Frack...

File this one under B for Be Careful What You Wish For. The leading US fossil fuel company Chesapeake Energy was among the first to take advantage of the natural gas fracking free-for-all sparked last year, when the Trump* administration opened up more public lands for drilling. That lead to a supply glut. Now all of a sudden Chesapeake is blaming low prices for its current predicament, which is pretty bad. Go ahead and file...

Huge Battery Investments Drop Energy-Storage Costs...

The global energy transition is happening faster than the models predicted, according to a report released today by the Rocky Mountain Institute, thanks to massive investments in the advanced-battery technology ecosystem. Previous and planned investments total $150 billion through 2023, RMI calculates—the equivalent of every person in the world chipping in $20. In the first half of 2019 alone, venture-capital firms...