Free Republic

The Bureau of Land Management is attempting to shut down the Bundy Ranch to clear the path for massive solar energy developments in southern Nevada that will enrich an A-list of well-connected Democrats close to President Obama, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and others. Completely unreported however, a scandal of epic proportions has been brewing with yet another Democrat-connected recipient of “green energy” stimulus funds. The Spain-based conglomerate Abengoa operates close to 600 subsidiaries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, and has received $3.6 billion in loans and grants in direct violation of President Obama’s "Recovery Act" promise...

em>"Probably for the next decade, the most dominate technology around the world will be coal..." -Jeff Immelt The fastest growing source of energy in the world last year was coal, and it is going to stay that way for a very long time. With that in mind, one has to wonder why President Obama has insisted on the gut-wrenching destruction of the coal industry that has costs thousands of jobs, and has sent electricity costs to all-time highs. This, combined with last month's report from the International Energy Agency, state that reaching the goal of carbon emission reduction would cost...

Can Opinion Turn Against Not-So-Jolly Green Giant?How much of a toll on the American economy does the green movement have to charge before Americans start to wake up to the dastardliness of radical environmentalism? Last month we saw firsthand one impact of Big Green on our economy with the White House announcement that the Keystone XL pipeline won't be built for at least six more months. Ten thousand blue collar jobs, almost all paying more than $50,000 a year, down the drain. It's a project that polls show almost all Americans want, except for the deep-pocketed green elite in Hollywood,...

I fear that this will not end well. Via Reuters: Segolene Royal, appointed French energy and environment minister this month, said on Friday she planned to create 100,000 jobs in the next three years with a drive for green growth.Royal told a news conference she wanted to accelerate investment in renewable energies like wind, solar, biomass and marine energy, as well as in insulation of buildings. …“I consider that, in the current context, the quasi-automatic increases of power bills are too brutal,” she said, adding that her cabinet was studying a new decree to control energy bills in the coming...

Solar’s getting cheaper, but it can never be a big reducer of carbon emissions.Solar energy can solve global warming. That’s what Paul Krugman claims in his April 18 column in the New York Times, “Salvation Gets Cheap.” Krugman extolled “the incredible recent decline in the cost of renewable energy, solar power in particular.” He used to dismiss the claim that renewable energy would be a major source of global energy “as hippie-dippy wishful thinking.” But now, he says, thanks to the falling price of renewable energy, the process of decarbonization can be accelerated and “drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions...

Failed Policy: The federal government has spent some $100 billion in taxpayer subsidies on green energy since 2006. Now we are seeing the flimsy and declining returns on that investment. The wind industry saw its growth tumble by 92% last year, according to a new report from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), and that's off of a very low base to begin with. Big Wind blames the decline in output on uncertainty over the future of a federal wind industry tax credit — an absurdly generous subsidy of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour produced. This handout is what keeps...

Look for a Climate Credit from the State of California on Your April Utility Bill This month your electricity bill will include a credit identified as the "California Climate Credit." Twice a year, in April and October, your household and millions of others throughout the state will receive this credit on your electricity bills. The Climate Credit is a payment to Californians from a program designed to fight climate change by limiting the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that our largest industries put into the atmosphere. This program is one of many developed as a result of landmark legislation called...

The son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Rory Reid, is the primary representative for ENN Energy Group, a Chinese energy company seeking to build a $5 billion solar panel plant on a 9,000-acre Clark County desert plot in Laughlin, Nevada. ENN scored big when Clark County commissioners unanimously voted to sell the Chinese company the public land for just $4.5 million, despite the fact that it was appraised at $38.6 million. Sen. Reid has been one of ENN’s biggest supporters, having recruited the company during a 2011 trip to China. According to Reuters, last month Sen. Reid tried...

The ranch, which has been in Cliven Bundy’s family for more than a century, is ground zero for a growing showdown between federal authorities and individual rights activists.VideoAs a family in Clark County, Nev. continues to face an onslaught of heavily armed federal agents determined to kick them off of their ranch, reports have surfaced that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might be behind the entire ordeal. The ranch, which has been in Cliven Bundy’s family for more than a century, is ground zero for a growing showdown between federal authorities and individual rights activists. Despite attempting to silence protesters...

In the summer of 2012, when Marita Noon and I began our collaboration in exposing the entire green corruption scheme, we covered a favored White House Spanish conglomerate in our piece "How Democrats Say 'Crony Corruption' in Spanish: Abengoa." Early this year, we received bombshell testimony, coupled with substantiated documentation, that Abengoa, at least at one of their three projects funded with billions of U.S. taxpayer money from President Obama’s 2009-Recovery Act, has broken stimulus laws and DOE loan stipulations. Worse, what we uncovered is that this foreign-owned firm has engaged in chilling, unethical and potentially criminal activity, including, but...

Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement today on Nevada’s February employment report which indicated Nevada’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5%:“Today’s Nevada employment report shows that we continue to see signs of economic growth in the Silver State. 8.5% is still a high rate of unemployment, and for this reason we need to ensure that we extend unemployment insurance for those who are struggling to make ends meet by no fault of their own. Their need is real, and next week I hope to have a final vote to extend these emergency benefits for thousands in...

A reporter has been detained by Capitol Hill police for trying to ask a question of Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy. Bloomberg BNA energy reporter Ari Natter tweeted about being detained. #transparency RT @AriNatter: I am being detained by Capital Police for trying to ask @EPAGina a question after her remarks. — nickjuliano (@nickjuliano) March 28, 2014 Natter was detained while covering the American Council On Renewable Energy conference, where McCarthy spoke. Also speaking at the conference was Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a staunch supporter of green energy who regularly takes the Senate floor to sound the...

Saving The Planet: It used to be said that socialism was the opium of the liberal intelligentsia. But now the drug of choice for the elite is environmentalism. The dirty little secret of the modern green movement is that it's become a luxury good for the uber-rich who espouse policies — from carbon taxes to renewable energy standards to closing down coal plants — that impose high costs on poor people who can least afford to pay the green tab. A Pew Research Center poll released last week offers further confirmation of this truism. It found that only two major...

The United Nations will officially warn that growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, The Telegraph can disclose. A leaked draft of a UN report condemns the widespread use of biofuels made from crops as a replacement for petrol and diesel. It says that biofuels, rather than combating the effects of global warming, could make them worse.

Cranbury, NJ (January 14, 2014) — BlackLight Power, Inc. (BLP) today announced that it has produced millions of watts of power with its breakthrough Solid Fuel-Catalyst-Induced-Hydrino-Transition (SF-CIHT) patent pending technology in its laboratories. Using a proprietary water-based solid fuel confined by two electrodes of a SF-CIHT cell, and applying a current of 12,000 amps through the fuel, water ignites into an extraordinary flash of power. The fuel can be continuously fed into the electrodes to continuously output power. BlackLight has produced millions of watts of power in a volume that is one ten thousandths of a liter corresponding to a...

Democrats have decided to lean-in, not back-away, from so-called clean energy. Despite the embarrassing history of government-funded green-energy failures, “wealthy environmentalists are pushing Democrats to take bolder positions on climate change”—and global warming, as an issue, provides the impetus for more green-energy spending. The Boston Globe reported on a recent “summit between Washington’s liberal elite and San Francisco’s climate intelligensia” that included “Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, six other senators, and … Al Gore.” The Globe points to new efforts by Democrats to “make global warming a central issue during the midterms.”

The global energy outlook has changed radically in just six years. President Obama was elected in 2008 by voters who believed we were running out of oil and gas, that climate change needed to be halted, and that renewables were the energy source of the near future. But an unexpected transformation of energy markets and politics may instead make 2014 the year of peak renewables.

The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind. It could also be the last. Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new...

Linking increased fuel economy to the larger issue of economic growth, President Obama on Tuesday directed his administration to write new rules to improve mileage for the nation’s big-rig trucks. Mr. Obama made the announcement during a speech at a suburban Maryland Safeway distribution center and cast it as the latest move in his so-called “year of action,” a time he’ll act without Congress wherever possible. “Improving gas mileage for these trucks is going to drive down our oil imports even further,” Mr. Obama said. “That reduces carbon pollution even more, cuts down on businesses’ fuel costs, which should pay...

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Ivanpah solar-power facility is controversial because it “costs about four times as much as a conventional natural-gas–fired plant but will produce far less electricity.” Once that electricity goes online, customers can expect to pay twice as much for it, if not more. No one knows for sure, because the utilities and state regulators involved haven’t disclosed that information. Oh yeah, and the plant is apparently scorching a bunch of birds to death. Over the past several months, one of the companies behind the Ivanpah plant, BrightSource Energy, has been finding “dozens” of dead...