Energy Secretary Perry Resigning at End of Year, Trump Says
Energy Secretary Rick Perry will leave his job by the end of the year, President Donald Trump said Thursday.
Read moreDepartment of Energy
Ninth Circuit Orders Thaw of Obama-Era Energy Efficiency Standards
The Trump administration cannot indefinitely freeze Obama-era energy efficiency standards that are expected to cut carbon emissions and save billions of dollars in energy costs, the Ninth Circuit ruled Thursday.
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Ninth Circuit Rejects Nevada’s Resistance to US Plutonium Shipments
The Ninth Circuit on Tuesday ruled against Nevada in a battle with the federal government over its secret shipment of weapons-grade plutonium to a site near Las Vegas, but the state’s attorney general says the fight isn’t over yet.
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Nevada: Feds Should Restudy Seismic Risk at Nuke Dump Site
Nevada’s governor and congressional delegation are pointing to earthquakes this month in the California desert and calling for the U.S. Energy Department to look again at seismic risks of burying the nation’s most radioactive nuclear waste at a site in the Mojave Desert.
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House Panel Dives Into Cyber Threats to Electric Grid
A malicious cyberattack in March disrupted the California, Utah and Wyoming electrical utility systems for several hours. No customers lost power and it only affected internal system operations, but it was enough to raise concerns about a more damaging and widespread attack on the electric grid.
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US Seeing Gains in Gas Market, Experts Tell Senate
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said Thursday that the U.S. faces a narrow window to becoming a global leader in the natural gas market.
Read moreNuclear-Waste Hot Potato Gets Underway in House
Diving into a decades-long stalemate, federal lawmakers considered three bills Thursday that take different approaches to the storage and disposal of America’s nuclear waste.
Read moreFeds Call Nuclear Waste Less Dangerous to Save Money
The federal government on Wednesday reclassifed some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to reduce its threat level, outraging critics who say the move will make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.
Read moreSierra Club
A federal judge granted summary judgment to the Sierra Club, finding that it has standing to sue over the Energy Department’s alleged failure to enact regulations that establish energy efficiency standards for manufactured housing.
Read moreBay Area Contractors Convicted in Bid-Rigging Scheme
A federal jury on Thursday convicted two San Francisco Bay Area contractors of defrauding the U.S. government by submitting phony bids for a renovation project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a scheme uncovered during an FBI investigation into a Chinese crime boss’ racketeering enterprise.
Read moreUS Secretly Shipped Plutonium From South Carolina to Nevada
The U.S. Department of Energy revealed on Wednesday that it secretly shipped weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina to a nuclear security site in Nevada months ago despite the state’s protests.
Read morePanel Rejects Bid to Stop SC Nuke Plant Closure
A multibillion-dollar energy project in South Carolina is now all but dead thanks to a ruling by the Fourth Circuit, which found that the state does not have standing to fight the Energy Department’s closure of a mixed-oxide nuclear processing plant.
Read moreResidents Blast Plan to Clean Up Cold War-Era Testing Site Near LA
People living near a Cold War-era rocket fuel testing site and nuclear facility in Southern California want an independent study of toxins in the area even as the federal government released a report Tuesday detailing how it will clean up the site.
Read moreNevada Balks at Feds’ Plan to Store Plutonium Near Vegas
The state of Nevada has sued the Trump administration to block shipment of more than a metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina to a site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, citing health concerns and the lack of an environmental impact statement.
Read moreObama-Era Efficiency Rules Face Hurdle in Ninth Circuit
Foreshadowing a potential win for the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda, a Ninth Circuit judge on Wednesday rejected arguments that the Energy Department intentionally relinquished its power to hold back stricter efficiency standards.
Read moreEnergy Department Says US Is Now World’s Top Oil Producer
The United States is pumping record amounts of oil, vaulting over Russia to become the world’s biggest producer of crude.
Read moreFracking
Columbia Riverkeeper brought a federal FOIA complaint against the U.S. Department of Energy for refusing to deliver information on its financial help to a Chinese company that wants to build a fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery on the Columbia River.
Read moreDirty Coal
The U.S. Department of Energy refuses to release documents on its efforts to bail out and favor the coal industry over other more economically and environmentally successful industries, the Sierra Club claims in a federal complaint.
Read moreFederal Budget, State Bills to Impact Future of Renewable Energy in Colorado
The president will release his proposed 2019 budget early next week, and many expect him to pick up where he left off last year – with hefty blows to renewable energy funding.
Read moreMembership of Federal Science Advisory Panels at 20-Year Low
Scientific advisory boards across the spectrum of federal government are worse off than at any time in the past 20 years, according to a study released Thursday by the Union for Concerned Scientists.
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