Category: CALIFORNIA_CN Fossil_Coal_CN Hydrogen_Biomass_CN UTAH_CN

Five days into our Western energy road trip, photographer Rob Gauthier and I drove late into the night across Utah, following the setting sun as it bathed the red-rock cliffs and snow-starved Wasatch Mountains in golden light. We crossed the Strawberry River — a sparkling tributary of the Colorado — before traversing Indian Canyon via Highway 191, a scenic byway lined with oil wells.

As the coal industry has collapsed in Kentucky, companies have racked up a rising number of violations at surface mines, and state regulators have failed to bring a record number of them into compliance, internal documents show.

In December, when the New York City Council voted to ban natural gas use in new buildings, environmentalists in the Big Apple barely stopped to celebrate.

When Illinois lawmakers decided last year to ban most coal-burning power plants by 2030, it was because their harmful effects were well known.

Chinese leaders are “doubling down on fossil fuels” amid “growing” fears of global energy shortages and “rising” concerns of an economic slump, according to Bloomberg. The news came after the Chinese government repeatedly underlined the importance of energy security at a series of key political meetings last week.

Methane emissions from coal mines worldwide exceed those from the global oil or gas sectors and are significantly higher than prior estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency and the International Energy Agency, a new Global Energy Monitor report concludes.

Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose to their highest level in history last year, according to the International Energy Agency, as economies rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic with a heavy reliance on coal. The IEA found energy-related global CO2 emissions increased by 6% in 2021 to reach a record high of 36.3 billion metric tons. In an analysis published Tuesday, the Paris-based organization pinpointed coal use as being the main driver behind the growth.

Empty freight cars line the railroad tracks as far as the eye can see from Tim Jennings’s backyard in Dante — a town of less than 600 residents.
“They should open up some more new mines around here,” the 61-year-old former coal miner says, pointing up at the mountains surrounding the valley. “Solar panels — that might work too.”

In the U.S., the amount of coal burned to generate electricity peaked in 2007 and then, between 2007 and 2020, fell by more than 61 percent. But as the effects of Covid-19 continue to re-shape energy markets, 2021 brought the largest increase in coal consumption in more than a decade. Since the start of the new year, increasing global anxieties about the fate of Ukraine, under attack by Russia, raise new concerns and anxieties certain to rattle energy futures.

The vast majority of critical minerals and rare earth elements that help power electric vehicles and wind turbines come from mining operations overseas. But a new initiative spearheaded by the US Department of Energy is looking for ways to extract them from fossil fuel waste.