Free Republic

China power problems are affecting 20 out of China’s 34 provinces. Cement production has been reduced by 29% and aluminum production capacity has been reduced 7%. Heavy industry has seen the most cutbacks. Coal prices are up but China’s utilities have energy price controls. There were quotas on coal mining. The rolling blackout and other power shutoff is also hitting hospitals and street lights. The power shutoffs are very broad and the facts do not align with various excuses and stories coming from China. China’s leadership has not been on top of the power shortage problem and has been months...

After the failure of talks on a mechanism to resume negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was announced Tuesday, a number of Egyptian experts and former ministers gave insight on the issue. Water Bomb Former Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Nasr Allam said in a TV interview that filling the dam's reservoir without a legal binding agreement may incur a famine in Egypt and Sudan. That is because the capacity of the dam is 74 billion cubic meters, which is almost equivalent to the annual water shares of Egypt (55.5 billion cubic meters) and Sudan (18...

Egyptian authorities fearful of a monopoly on Nile waters received agreement from Khartoum to build an airbase in Sudan, to launch attacks on Ethiopian damming facilities, claims the anonymous media outlet; Wikileaks. Wikileaks has leaked files allegedly from the Texas-based global intelligence company, Stratfor, which quote an anonymous "high-level Egyptian source," claiming the Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon said in 2010 his nation would do anything to prevent the secession of South Sudan because of the political implications it will have for Egypt's access to the Nile. The Nile is vital in providing fresh water to the people and agricultural projects...

The waters of the Blue Nile have for millennia flowed down from the Ethiopian highlands enriching the countries on its banks. The rocks that make up its riverbed have been eroded by Ethiopia's past and now that the construction of Africa's largest hydro-electric dam has begun, these same rocks are helping to build the country's future. The Grand Renaissance Dam project was announced last year by the Ethiopian government, in a unilateral move that is not sitting very well with its upstream neighbors. Egypt and Sudan say Ethiopia is threatening their greatest natural resource. If construction stays on schedule the...

In ten years Oregon has handed out $1.3 billion in tax credits for renewable energy and conservation projects like wind power, but questions about why the state is spending so much on something that may have a hidden environmental drawback have been raised by some. Wind power is touted as the cleanest and greenest renewable energy resource. But Todd Wynn of the Cascade Policy Institute says it’s not as clean as advocates claim. He says it’s simply because the wind is volatile and doesn’t blow all the time, and Johnson said "you don't know what (the wind) is going to...