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The story around Solyndra—the failed solar company that took hundreds of millions in government loan guarantees—is not getting better for greens. Earlier this week Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison let Congress know through his lawyers that he wouldn’t be answering any questions at a House investigation hearing set forFriday. “Mr. Harrison intends to invoke his Fifth [...]
The news from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan just keeps getting worse. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that at least a “partial meltdown” seemed to be happening, and today the U.S. government advised its citizens to stay at least 50 miles away from the Fukushima plant. The worst-case scenario—a release of a large [...]
Readers of this blog will know that one of my pet issues is energy research and innovation. The U.S. invests an obscenely low amount of federal money on basic energy research—perhaps $5 billion a year, not counting one-time stimulus spending, compared to $30 billion and north of $70 billion annually for medicine and defense research. [...]
From the very beginning of the BP oil spill—when reporters were told that there probably was no oil spill at all—the people in charge have consistently underestimated the size of the spill. After that initial mistake, BP told us that oil was flowing at about 1,000 barrels a day from the blown well. (Each barrel [...]
Carbon cap-and-trade is dead—at least for this political lifetime. And while the circular firing squad among Democrats and greens has already begun, it’s worth taking a deep breath and remembering that there are other tools that can be used to deal with climate change. As TIME’s Joe Klein points out, the Supreme Court ruled more [...]
As I write this, the first Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) is getting underway in Washington, with opening remarks from Energy Secretary Steven Chu—apparently taking a short break from uncovering problems in BP’s well capping procedures. (You can watch a live webcast of the meeting here.) The two-day meeting—yesterday’s session was closed to the public—brings together [...]
A quick post before I head back out. Yesterday evening BP had begun closing down the valves on its new containment cap, in preparation to pressure test the integrity of the wellbore—and find out whether the well might be able to be fully capped. Overnight, though, they hit a snag—the kill line, one of three [...]
Call it oil spill interruptus. A day after Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen—on the advice of academic and government scientists led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu—abruptly stopped a planned attempt to halt the flow of oil from the new containment cap and measure the integrity of the wellbore, the all-important test is now back [...]
When he spoke at a briefing yesterday morning, Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen told reporters that it would be a “very consequential 24 hours.” At the time BP had just connected the new, tighter cap over the blown well and was ready to begin pressure tests that—if successful—would have been one of the last [...]
