A new EPA rule puts 18 aging coal plants on a path to being cleaned up or retired and another EPA rule on haze could affect a total of 300 coal facilities.
The EPA is acting on its Clean Air Act mandate to collaborate with states to reduce haze.
This milestone agreement comes after the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Parks Conservation Association and WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit early in 2011 challenging the EPA’s failure to act.
According to a June agreement filed in the US District Court in Colorado, the EPA will be…

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it added protections to the Clean Air Act aimed at reducing smokestack emissions that are responsible for causing air pollution in neighboring cities and states. The protections are aimed to replace the EPA’s 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). According to the EPA, “a December 2008 court decision kept the requirements of CAIR in place temporarily but directed EPA to issue a new rule to implement Clean Air Act requirements concerning the transport of air pollution across state boundaries.”
The regulations were updated in order to protect those living downwind of…

Paul Zoubkov and Helen Turek talk about Transparency International’s (TI) Europe wide initiative to improve national anti-corruption systems.
Good governance, accountability and rule of law are among the key hallmarks of a healthy society, and yet right across Europe, there is a deep sense of frustration that key national institutions and actors are not living up to the expected standards of integrity.
A recent EU-funded study, has found that almost four in five EU citizens identify corruption as being a major problem for their country, while TI’s own Global Corruption Barometer has shown almost equal numbers consider corruption getting worse in…

On July 1, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) released its much-anticipated “Preliminary Revised Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program.” Behind its fearsome name, this document outlines the parameters for a regulatory regime surrounding hydraulic fracturing in New York. The Preliminary Revised Draft SGEIS was undertaken after NYSDEC received thousands of public comments in response to the first Draft SGEIS it released in September 2009.
New York’s acceptance of hydraulic fracturing stands in contrast to recent developments in New Jersey andFrance, where legislators recently passed bills…

A 2011 study suggests that consumers are changing the way they look at transportation. This is one of the key findings of an Accenture survey tiled Plug-in Electric Vehicles: Changing Perceptions, Hedging Bets.
The Accenture survey also found that:
Purchase price is only one deciding factor in buying an electric vehicle. Recharging convenience, range anxiety and even the source of the energy for recharging are all of concern to potential buyers.
Today’s consumer favors plug-in hybrids over full electric vehicles
Utilities will have to invest in infrastructure upgrades to meet consumer preference for where and when…

Let’s face it, there’s nothing really sustainable about the current transportation sector in this country. While bike sharing programs and walkable, carless cities have emerged both domestically and abroad, the reliance on infrastructure – namely roads and rails, not to mention air travel – alone comes at a great cost to both the pocket book and the earth’s equilibrium. The extraction of metals to build planes, trains, and automobiles, as well as the coal, oil, and natural gas used to power these behemoths constitute an unsustainable system.
Some individuals and companies have devised options to…

The DOE Energy Blog posted this news a while ago, but it’s still informational as the change doesn’t take effect for another year or so. As Americans become more concerned with the economical and environmental costs associated with owning and operating a car, it’s more important than ever to have an easy to understand way to see fuel costs for vehicles. The new labels from the EPA and DOT do exactly that. According to the DOE blog,
Traditional miles per gallon estimates will be joined by the average annual fuel costs for each vehicle, along with a comparison of…

China appears to be heading for its worst power shortage since 2004, putting pressure on already struggling industries and strained livelihoods due to restricted energy access. The 26 provinces served by the State Grid Corp of China could face a combined power shortage of 30 gigawatts (GW) this summer. Central, southern, southwestern and eastern provinces introduced power use restrictions and rationing in late March, well ahead of the summer peak demand season, fueling concerns that shortages could worsen and spread to other regions.
Jiangsu, Henan, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Hubei provinces are most susceptible to electricity shortages this summer. Jiangsu…