Following the Oil Trail: From Alberta to British Columbia
Following the Oil Trail: From Alberta to British Columbia
Following the Oil Trail: From Alberta to British Columbia
VANCOUVER, BC – It’s nearing the end of January, and I am close to four months into my storytelling project, documenting the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline that will carry oil from the Athabasca oil sands in northern Alberta to the British Columbia coast. From the oil boom town of Fort McMurray, where the oil…
Report from Fort McMurray, the Heart of Canada’s Oil Sands Development
Report from Fort McMurray, the Heart of Canada’s Oil Sands Development
Report from Fort McMurray, the Heart of Canada’s Oil Sands Development
EDMONTON – It is 7 a.m. and I am on bus with a group of sleepy students from the University of Alberta on our way up to Fort McMurray, the heart of oil sands extraction in Alberta, a western province of Canada. Soft conversations drift across the bus. It is still dark outside and many…
New Report Ranks the World’s ‘Greenest’ Utilities
New Report Ranks the World’s ‘Greenest’ Utilities
New Report Ranks the World’s ‘Greenest’ Utilities
By one measure – and measuring this sort of thing can get pretty complicated – the world’s biggest energy providers got a whole lot greener in 2013. The publication EI New Energy, in releasing its third annual compilation of the “Top 100 Green Utilities” (PDF), said emissions-free sources accounted for 80 percent of the new energy generating capacity added…
Mass Efficiency: Bay State Best In Saving Energy, Again
Mass Efficiency: Bay State Best In Saving Energy, Again
Mass Efficiency: Bay State Best In Saving Energy, Again
Massachusetts held the top spot for the fourth consecutive year and North Dakota again brought up the rear in the latest annual assessment of state energy efficiency efforts. In between, there was a lot of movement on the 2014 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, both positive and negative – Arkansas leaped six places to 31st, while…
New Gas Plant Venture Aims at Carbon Capture From a Different Angle
New Gas Plant Venture Aims at Carbon Capture From a Different Angle
New Gas Plant Venture Aims at Carbon Capture From a Different Angle
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is often promoted as a way for coal power to be made “clean”: Projects such as the in-progress Kemper power plant in Mississippi and the recently announced Petra Nova project in Texas aim to trap the carbon dioxide from burning coal and then store it into underground storage or into…
In the Push to Expand Energy Access, Companies Eye Loan Guarantees
In the Push to Expand Energy Access, Companies Eye Loan Guarantees
In the Push to Expand Energy Access, Companies Eye Loan Guarantees
Loan guarantees have been around since at least the 1940s, when the U.S. government backed loans for homes, farms and businesses for World War II veterans. More recently, the U.S. government has used loan guarantee programs to support the development of clean energy. Projects including the large Ivanpah solar facility in California’s Mojave Desert, a…
A Clean Climate Must Be a Consumer Commodity
A Clean Climate Must Be a Consumer Commodity
A Clean Climate Must Be a Consumer Commodity
The United Nations Climate Summit taking place here in New York is, of course, a venue for important scientific releases highlighting the now well-established consensus on both the economic and social severity of inaction on global warming. These statements will bolster thoughtful proposals to move nations to a common ground on a framework for action.…
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