A coalition of environmental groups is asking the federal government to step in and combine the environmental studies for three different coal export terminal proposals into one.
In addition to the Gateway Pacific terminal proposed for Cherry Point near Bellingham, export terminals also are proposed for Longview in southwest Washington and Boardman, Ore., on the Columbia River.
Earthjustice, a Seattle environmental law firm, sent a letter on Wednesday to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offices in Seattle and Portland.
The letter was signed by 11 environmental groups, including Climate Solutions, National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club and the Washington Environmental Council.
The Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Exports, a Seattle-based group of business organizations and others formed to support the export terminals, issued a counterstatement to the environmental groups' request Wednesday.
"This is a stall tactic, pure and simple," said Lauri Hennessey, a spokeswoman for the Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Exports.
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The Office of Sustainability and Environment has developed a new Climate Action Plan to meet the bold goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. The plan actions reduce greenhouse gas emissions, help prepare the city for the impacts of a changing climate, and make Seattle an even better place to live. On April 22, 2013 (Earth Day), the plan was submitted to City Council. The Seattle Climate Action Plan will be discussed in two Energy and Environment Committee meetings--Tuesday, April 23 and Tuesday, May 14--and will also be the topic of a public town hall on Tuesday, May 7 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at University Heights Center.
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At Spring Creek Mine, a broad black seam of coal, reaching depths of 80 feet, runs like a subterranean river through arid, sagebrush-covered hills.
This is a world-class seam formed from the remnants of ferns, grasses and other plants that flourished here more than 50 and #8201;million years ago, when this part of Montana was a humid marsh.
Cloud Peak Energy, operators of this mine, and other companies have proposals that could eventually double the state's coal production -- part of the push for a big expansion of U.S. coal exports.
"There has been more activity in Montana in the last three years than there has been in a generation," said Todd O'Hair, a senior manager at Cloud Peak.
Standing on the knoll where George Armstrong Custer made his last stand, you can watch the coal trains that already rumble north en route to British Columbia, where coal is now shipped to South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. To boost overseas sales, Cloud Peak also has secured rights to ship coal through Washington terminals proposed for Cherry Point near Bellingham and for Longview.
The industry's export push has put Montana on the front lines of what is shaping up as one of the Northwest's biggest environmental battles in a decade.
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Before skyscrapers, Seattle's waterfront held little more than tide flats edged with evergreen forests. Those forests ran off the sunlight and rainwater that fell on them, and they did nothing to pollute the area.
What if today's urban landscapes could return to that level of natural efficiency?
That's what the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation is attempting to do by creating the world's greenest office building on the edge of the Capitol Hill neighborhood overlooking downtown Seattle.
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One of the finest applications of solar photovoltaic panels is in powering drip irrigation systems for farmers in hot, sunny, poor parts of the world. You don't even need to store the electricity. The pumping is mainly needed when the sun is shining.
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A new collaborative research project could develop a solar power system that concentrates sunlight 2000 times and converts 80 percent of incoming sunlight to energy.
The Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation awarded a $2.4 million grant to scientists from computer giant IBM Research, solar company Airlight Energy, technology university ETH Zurich and the Interstate University of Applied Sciences Buchs NTB.
Over three years, the team will work on making an affordable High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system – a parabolic dish covered in mirrors that tracks the sun.
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Despite an international agreement to reduce emissions from carbon-intensive sources, oil and coal companies continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars a year into finding new fossil fuel deposits containing enough carbon to more than double global climate pollution emissions.
This is the conclusion of a new report finding that $674 billion was spent globally last year alone on the discovery of new fossil fuel deposits that will likely never be used.
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A line of Mini Coopers, each attached to the regional power grid by a thick cable plugged in where a gasoline filler pipe used to be, no longer just draws energy. The power now flows two ways between the cars and the electric grid, as the cars inject and suck power in tiny jolts, and get paid for it.
This nascent form of electric car commerce will be announced on Friday by the University of Delaware, the regional grid operator and an electric company. They have developed a system to collect payments for work (balancing supply and demand moment to moment) that is normally the domain of power plants.
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Runoff from heavy rains flooded parts of a cemetery in St. Louis County on April 18, 2013. (Photo credit: Robert Cohen)
It seems like just a few months ago barges were scraping bottom on the Mississippi River, and the Army Corps of Engineers was blowing up rocks on the bottom of the river to allow shipping to continue. Wait, it was just a few months ago–less than four months ago!
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The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists.
"The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed," said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was "very big indeed" and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it.
The so-called "carbon bubble" is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for "dangerous" climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries' inaction on climate change.
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