Free Republic

The Interior Department is changing the way it values coal mined from public lands in the West to make sure mining companies are not shortchanging taxpayers on sales to Asia and other markets. […] Under rules in place since the 1980s, companies can sell the fuel to affiliates and pay royalties to the government on that price, then turn around and sell the coal at higher prices, often overseas. …

Coal production in the first three months of 2016 was 173 million short tons, the lowest quarterly level in the United States since a major coal strike in the second quarter of 1981. Among the regions tracked by the EIA, the Powder River Basin (PBR) in Montana and Wyoming saw the largest decline both in terms of absolute tonnage and as a percentage of the previous quarter.Demand for coal has dropped off steeply as natural gas becomes the primary fuel source for electrical generation. Electricity generation accounts for more than 90% of domestic coal use, but environmental regulations have caused...

Energy: The EPA’s proposal to increase the amount of ethanol that must be blended into gasoline is a trifecta of regulatory abuse. It will do nothing for the environment, it will do nothing for energy security, and it could wreck millions of car engines

If he lives up to his campaign rhetoric, a President Donald Trump would be a nightmare for the Environmental Protection Agency, radical environmentalism and the mandate- and subsidy-dependent “green” energy racket. I have paid close attention this campaign season to what every candidate has said about environmental issues. Almost all 17 of the Republican candidates strongly opposed Obama’s war on coal, the job-killing EPA, and global warming hysteria. But Trump has exhibited something else — unusually keen insight into and visceral dislike for green extremism, especially as inflicted upon us by the Obama administration.

There was a time in America -- and it wasn't even so long ago -- that liberals cared a lot about working-class people. They may have been misguided in many of their policy solutions -- e.g., raising the minimum wage -- but at least their hearts were in the right place. Then a strange thing happened about a decade ago. Radical environmentalists took control of the Democratic Party. These leftists care more about the supposed rise of the oceans than the financial survival of the middle class. The industrial unions made a catastrophic decision to get in bed with these...

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rejected a plea Thursday to block a contentious air pollution rule for power plants, in a big victory for the Obama administration. Roberts’s order came despite his court’s 5-4 decision last year ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulation, known as mercury and air toxics standards, is illegal. Michigan led a group of 20 states last month, empowered by the Supreme Court’s recent unprecedented decision to halt the EPA’s climate change rule for power plants, in asking the court to live up to its ruling last year and block the regulation’s enforcement. “Unless...

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a clarification in response to claims that it is proposing a ban on converting road vehicles into race cars. The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) issued a statement on Monday indicating its intention to fight an EPA proposal to change the wording to the Clean Air Act as it applies to the installation of aftermarket parts that might circumvent stock emission-control devices. But in a separate statement released to the media today, the EPA said that the proposed change is merely intended to clean up the wording of an existing law: "People may use...

I’m one of those masochists who signs up for daily email alerts from several news services just to keep tabs on the stories I might miss on cable news. I get a couple of them from the Washington Post, one of which is the “Five Minute Fix.” These breaking news alerts provide not only a quick glance at the news of the day, but frequently a good look at how reporters at one of the nation’s largest newspapers view the news and choose to project it to the public. Last night’s Fix was a great example of the latter...

The heat is on! Not the unusual winter warmth in much of the United States - but the unrelenting heat generated by propaganda and pressure campaigns that the White House, EPA, Big Green and news media are unleashing in the wake of the Paris climate agreement … and as a prelude to the 2016 elections. A recent Washington Post editorial laid out the strategy. The long-term warming trend is "concerning." Maybe we can't blame this year's strong El Nino "squarely on climate change," but "one paper" says the number of strong El Nino years could double. Obama's "landmark" carbon dioxide...

Sen. John Barrasso gives the Republican Party's Weekly Remarks Hi. I’m Dr. John Barrasso, United States Senator for Wyoming. Let me tell you a story about a family in my home state. Andy Johnson is 32, he works as a welder. He and his wife Katie have four kids and they live out in the country. They have a few cows and some horses. (Scroll down for video of these remarks.) Two years ago, the Johnsons wanted to build a small pond in their front yard. They got their plan approved by the state, and used the pond to provide...

When Obama was speaking to environmentalist supporters in 2008 regarding his plans to address “climate change,” he candidly revealed, “Under my plan, electricity costs will necessarily skyrocket.” Obama’s White House Science Advisor John Holdren later elaborated, “We need to de-develop the United States to bring our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.” The so-called Clean Power Plan proposed by Obama’s EPA is well-designed to do precisely that -- de-develop the United States. A new study from the National Black Chamber of Commerce estimates the regulation will cause job losses reaching 7 million...

Soon after it released 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into Colorado's Animas River, the Environmental Protection Agency tried to downplay the damage.

Dave Taylor, the retired geologist who predicted the EPA project that caused the 3 million gallon toxic spill into the Animas River in Colorado would fail, tells Breitbart News, “I didn’t really know they were going to fool with the Gold King mine in addition to the Red and Bonita mine.”In a July 30 letter to the editor of the Silverton Standard, Taylor predicted that the EPA project to plug the Red and Bonita mine would fail “within 7 to 120 days,” and the 500 gallons per minute flow of toxic waste from those mines which the project stopped temporarily...

A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money...

From his backyard in Durango, Colorado, Tom Bartles can see the Animas River, which was stained an unnatural orange. The Environmental Protection Agency accidentally released millions of gallons of pollutants into the water last week, turning the typically blue water to the color of mustard. "Everybody in town knew it was coming. It was hard to wake up in the morning and see an orange river," Bartles, 52, told CNN. "Many of the locals in this region are probably going to experience a certain level of mourning." [Snip] Officials said they believe the spill carried metals, mainly iron, zinc and...

WASHINGTON — In the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change, President Obama will unveil on Monday a set of environmental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants and ultimately transform America’s electricity industry. The rules are the final, tougher versions of proposed regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations will set in motion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plants and create a...

Part of President Obama's new plan is to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent by 2030. President Barack Obama will Monday unveil what he called the “biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken” to fight climate change, a sensitive issue central to his legacy. The White House will release the final version of America’s Clean Power Plan, a set of environmental rules and regulations that will home in on the pollution from the nation’s power plants, setting limits on power-plant carbon emissions. Laying out how climate change was a threat to the health, well being and security...

President Barack Obama will impose steeper cuts on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants across the country than previously expected, senior administration officials said Sunday, in what the president called the most significant step the U.S. has ever taken to fight global warming. The Obama administration is expected to finalize the RULE at a White House event on Monday, a year after proposing UNPRECEDENTED carbon dioxide limits. Obama, in a video posted on Facebook, said the limits were backed up by decades of data and facts showing that without tough action, the world will face more extreme weather and escalating...

Three coal-fired power plants in West Virginia have shut down operations. Media outlets report that Appalachian Power's Kanawha River Power Station at Glasgow, the Kammer Power Station near Moundsville and the Phillip Sporn Power Station at New Haven were closed Sunday. Appalachian Power had announced in 2011 that it planned to close the plants, along with three coal-fired plants in Virginia, Ohio and Indiana. The company had said it would be cost-prohibitive to equip them to comply with new federal emission standards for mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. Another coal-fired plant in Virginia is being converted to natural gas....

One of the country's largest coal utilities will begin closing power plants next month in four states, as strict federal environmental regulations begin to kick in. The company, American Electric Power, made the announcement in a notice advising employees at the electricity stations that it plans to close six power plants in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana, according to news reports. The company said it plans to shutter as much as 6,000 megawatts of power plant capacity in seven states by the start of 2016. The closures were planned as far back as 2011 to comply with new pollution...