Doug Burgum is, by all accounts, a normie. Compared to some of the other picks for incoming President Trump’s cabinet, the former North Dakota governor is well respected by his political colleagues; even many of the Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee seemed c … | Continue reading
Confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s energy and environment appointees continued Thursday, with Lee Zeldin and Doug Burgum appearing before the Senate for their nominations as Environmental Protection Agency administrator and secretary of the Interior. While Burgum was long t … | Continue reading
Today we’re speaking with Cici Vu and Morgan Putnam from DNV Energy Systems, who helped craft a must-read report out this week on community relations in transmission with Americans for Clean Energy Grid (ACEG). Their report compiles findings of a roundtable with environmentalists … | Continue reading
1. Youngkin sides with locals – Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin this week said at his State of the State address that he would oppose efforts to “end local control of solar project siting” – indicating he will fiercely challenge efforts by some state policymakers to resolve challeng … | Continue reading
1. McIntosh County, Oklahoma – Say goodbye to the Canadian River wind project, we hardly knew thee. The TransAlta utility-scale wind facility was canceled mere days after we were first to report on the uprising in favor of a ban on new renewables in the state. Local residents had … | Continue reading
After a week and a half of unimaginable destruction, Los Angeles is at last beginning to look toward its recovery from the Palisades and Eaton fires. Traversing that stage will take years, not only because of the significant economic and political implications of the fires, but a … | Continue reading
Here’s a grim fact: The most destructive fires in recent American history swept over a state with the country’s strictest wildfire-specific building code, including in some of the neighborhoods that are now largely smoldering rubble. California’s wildfire building code, Chapter 7 … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Cooler temperatures and calmer winds are helping firefighters make progress against ongoing blazes in Los Angeles • Argentina is bracing for an extreme heat wave • A blast of Arctic air called a “Siberian express” will send temperatures plummeting across centr … | Continue reading
When New York Governor Kathy Hochul gave her State of the State address on Tuesday, climate advocates expected her to unveil an overdue plan to implement and fund the state’s climate law, which was enacted in 2019. Instead, she implied that she was delaying the plan indefinitely. … | Continue reading
Major groups in the anti-offshore wind movement are going big, submitting a lengthy policy wish list to the Trump transition team, according to documents obtained and first reported by Heatmap News. Key organizations in the movement against offshore wind submitted a draft executi … | Continue reading
With Donald Trump due to take office in less than a week and a Republican Congress already sworn in, much of the Biden administration’s effort to advance clean and especially renewable energy is now in doubt. The fate of the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to be a major flashpo … | Continue reading
Whether they’re dealing with fires like the ones ravaging Los Angeles or hurricanes like those that wreaked havoc in Florida and North Carolina just a few months ago, when natural disasters lay waste to homes and towns, what low-income residents often need most is quick cash. Tha … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms brought transportation chaos to Sydney and left 120,000 homes without power • Greece may resort to filling hotel pools with seawater instead of fresh water due to extreme drought • A clipper storm will bring some snow to the Great Lakes an … | Continue reading
Hydrogen. What are you even supposed to think about it? If you’ve spent serious time focusing on climate policy, you’ve heard the hype about hydrogen — about the miraculous things that it might do to eliminate carbon pollution from cars, power plants, steel mills, or more. You’ve … | Continue reading
For more than four years, California has had a law on the books meant to protect homes and buildings during an urban firestorm like the Palisade and Eaton fires. But it’s never gone into effect. In theory, the policy was simple. It directed state officials to develop new rules fo … | Continue reading
The first veto of Joe Biden’s presidency, in March 2023, came on a bill that would have overturned a Department of Labor rule allowing retirement funds to consider environment, social, and governance factors — commonly known as ESG — when making investment decisions. At the time, … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Nearly 10 million people are under alert today for fire weather conditions in southern California • The coastal waters off China hit their highest average temperature, 70.7 degrees Fahrenheit, since record-keeping began • A blast of cold air will bring freezin … | Continue reading
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon. “T … | Continue reading
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as lo … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Odd weather has caused broccoli and cauliflower plants to come up far too early in the UK • Another blast of Arctic air is headed for the Midwest • An air quality alert has been issued in Los Angeles due to windblown dust and ash. THE TOP FIVE 1. Strong winds … | Continue reading
A week ago, forecasters in Southern California warned residents of Los Angeles that conditions would be dry, windy, and conducive to wildfires. How bad things have gotten, though, has taken everyone by surprise. As of Monday morning, almost 40,000 acres of Los Angeles County have … | Continue reading
Los Angeles has a long way to go before city and state officials can start looking for lessons to take away from these fires. Likely topics of discussion will include building resilient structures, vegetation management, and community preparedness. But there are also some more ou … | Continue reading
A top aide to incoming President Donald Trump is claiming the president-elect wants the U.S. to acquire Greenland to acquire more rare minerals. “This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources,” Trump’s soon-to-be national security advisor Michael Waltz told Fox … | Continue reading
On Friday, Angelenos awoke to their first good news in three days: that the battle against the city’s unprecedented fires had finally turned in firefighters’ favor. Though the two biggest blazes — the Palisades and the Eaton — were still only single-digit contained, at 8% and 3%, … | Continue reading
Once the fires stop burning in Los Angeles and the city picks itself up from the rubble, the chorus of voices asking how such a disaster could have been prevented will rise. In California, the answer to that desperate query is so often “better forestry management practices,” and … | Continue reading
Almost no city in the country is destroyed more often than Los Angeles. America’s second-biggest city has been flattened, shaken, invaded, subsumed by lava, and calved off into the sea dozens of times on screen over the years; as the filmmaker and critic Thom Andersen has said, “ … | Continue reading
Current conditions: A sinkhole threatens to swallow up Ecuador’s large hydroelectric power plant • Air quality is poor in Delhi where dense smog has caused travel chaos • Nearly 40,000 customers are already without power in Texas as a winter storm rolls in. THE TOP FIVE 1. Biden … | Continue reading
Recovering from the Los Angeles wildfires will be expensive. Really expensive. Insurance analysts and banks have already produced a wide range of estimates of both what insurance companies will pay out and overall economic loss. AccuWeather has put out an eye-catching preliminary … | Continue reading
A fire needs three things to burn: heat, fuel, and oxygen. The first is important: At some point this week, for a reason we have yet to discover and may never will, a piece of flammable material in Los Angeles County got hot enough to ignite. The last is essential: The resulting … | Continue reading
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Thursday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place? Though fires are less common in California during this t … | Continue reading
1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved. Last week, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said it wanted to lease more than 400 acres of undeveloped st … | Continue reading
1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind. “They litter our country like paper, like dropping garbage in a field,” Trump said at a press conference T … | Continue reading
This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful researc … | Continue reading
This week’s interview is with Brown University professor J. Timmons Roberts. Those of you familiar with the fight over offshore wind may not know Roberts by name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: He and his students have spearheaded some of the most impactful researc … | Continue reading
Los Angeles is on fire, and it’s possible that much of the city could burn to the ground. This would be a disaster for California’s already wobbly home insurance market and the residents who rely on it. Kettle Insurance, a fintech startup focused on wildfire insurance for Califor … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Winter storm Cora is expected to disrupt more than 5,000 U.S. flights • Britain’s grid operator is asking power plants for more electricity as temperatures plummet • Parts of Australia could reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming days because the monsoon, … | Continue reading
Everyone knows the story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, the one that allegedly knocked over a lantern in 1871 and burned down 2,100 acres of downtown Chicago. While the wildfires raging in Los Angeles County have already far exceeded that legendary bovine’s total attributed damage — at t … | Continue reading
As wildfires spread through the Los Angeles area, one resident of a tony neighborhood made a desperate plea for help on social media. “Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades?” asked Keith Wasserman on X. “Will pay any amount.” The … | Continue reading
Wildfires have been raging across Los Angeles County since Tuesday morning, but only in the past 24 hours or so has the city’s air quality begun to suffer. That’s because of the classic path of the Santa Ana winds, Alistair Hayden, a public health professor at Cornell who studies … | Continue reading
The massive wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in Southern California may deal a devastating blow to the state’s fragile home insurance market, which is in the midst of large-scale reforms as part of an effort to lure private insurers back to the state. In the years runn … | Continue reading
The massive wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in Southern California may deal a devastating blow to the state’s fragile home insurance market, which is in the midst of large-scale reforms as part of an effort to lure private insurers back to the state. In the years runn … | Continue reading
The Greater Los Angeles area is awash in smoke and ash as multiple fires burn in and around the city. It’s too soon to assess the overall pollution impacts from this rare January event, but we know the smoke is filled with tiny particles known as PM2.5, one of the most pernicious … | Continue reading
“It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows,” the great Los Angeles chronicler Joan Didion once wrote of the Santa Ana winds. It also happens to be the season of wildfires. The winds “bedeviled” efforts to fight the deadly Woolsey fire in 2 … | Continue reading
January is one of the worst months of the year for wildfires — in southern Australia. Not in the metro area of Los Angeles, where it is, technically, supposed to be the rainy season. But try telling a fire that it’s unseasonal. At the time of this writing, three wildfires are bur … | Continue reading
Ask me one thing I love about living in Los Angeles and there’s a good chance I’d say, Because it’s wild. The giant city park near us is no flat, grassy plane for picnicking and Frisbee, but a rugged expanse of coyotes and the occasional mountain lion, God rest his soul. Outside … | Continue reading
There’s a nascent, concerted effort to make Oklahoma the first state to ban new renewable energy projects. And it’s picking up steam. Across the U.S., activism against wind and solar energy has only grown in intensity, power, and scope in tandem with the recent renewables boom. T … | Continue reading
The Palisades, Hurst, and Eaton fires now spreading across Los Angeles are yet another reminder that our rapidly changing climate now acts in unprecedented ways, with hurricane-force winds, longstanding drought, and a host of other factors contributing to blazes that have so far … | Continue reading
Current conditions: It is 27 degrees Fahrenheit in Dallas, Texas, and snow is expected • The whole of England is under a cold weather health warning until Sunday • A water boil advisory is in effect for Richmond, Virginia, after a winter storm cut power to the city’s water treatm … | Continue reading