It might have seemed like one of the weirder headlines of 2024: Microsoft is paying $1.6 billion to restart Three Mile Island. That’s the nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania whose reactor #2 had a partial meltdown in 1979. There were no injuries, and nobody died, but it set the nuclear industry back years. Only two new plants...
Optimism remains high that growth in the biofuels industry will continue under the new Trump administration. In late February, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced year-round E15 sales in eight Midwest states. “Today’s decision underscores EPA’s commitment to consumer access to E15 while ensuring a smooth transition for fuel suppliers and refiners,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin...
Polish refiner Orlen (PKN.WA) and Norway’s Equinor (EQNR.OL) signed on Monday a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. The documents were signed by Irene Rummelhoff – Executive Vice President at Equinor, and Wieslaw Prugar, Orlen management board member in charge of upstream. Under the memorandum, Orlen and Equinor will...
Renewable energy generation is surging across many of the country’s red-leaning states, positioning some to outpace their bluer peers in a national drive toward grid decarbonization. Their emerging leadership in the area in some ways defies the political battle lines that have been drawn on energy in recent years. On the federal level, Democrats have...
While the hilltop overlook here boasts a splendid view of the Pacific coast, the land all around us is far less impressive. Municipal garbage trucks rumble along gravel roads to an adjacent landfill. Stumps and branches of dead eucalyptus trees form huge piles, refuse left behind by a former commercial forestry operation. Aclara Resources, the...
China dominates solar power supply chains, but the era of American energy dominance could change that. Recent domestic manufacturing investments in the solar industry have totaled more than $40 billion since 2022, further unleashing the industry’s potential here at home. Solar has firmly cemented itself as a key part of our all-of-the-above energy strategy and has steadily grown in...
Put another way, while productivity gains in the economy reduce emissions by letting us consume more with fewer inputs, the taxes and regulations that accompany climate policies carry a “deadweight loss” that trades productivity improvement for direct emission abatement. This creates a tradeoff typically not included in analysis and potentially explains why having many regulations...
China imposed targeted tariffs on American imports on Tuesday and put several U.S. companies, including Google, on notice for possible sanctions, in a measured response to the sweeping duties on Chinese imports imposed by President Donald Trump. Beijing’s limited reply to Trump’s imposition of a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports underscored the attempt by Chinese policymakers to...
At home, lower energy prices—particularly at the pump—are central to Trump’s strategy for reducing consumer inflation and stimulating economic growth. The President has set an ambitious goal of reducing retail gasoline prices to below $2 per gallon, a significant drop from the current national average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
US cleantech projects are being delayed and restructured since climate critic Donald Trump’s election in November. But advisors warn that examples of foreign-owned cleantech projects being halted in recent months do not foreshadow an end to the sector’s momentum under the new government. On January 22, two days after the president signed executive orders targeting cleantech...
