Free Republic

As far as I’m concerned, this New Year is off to a resounding start, with the wind industry and Green cabal already taking a pounding right out of the proverbial gate. Yesterday’s late good news is so, SO schweet. Another huge blow for renewable energy to fight climate change: BP and Equinor have scrapped a massive offshore wind power project off New York's Long Island. Empire Wind 2 can't go forward b/c of cost increases. The whales win again!

The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe’s repeated objections. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history. As reported by Curtis Killman in the Tulsa World on Thursday, the ruling grants the United States, the Osage Nation, and Osage Minerals Council permanent injunctive relief via “ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass.” The decision by U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer...

An investigation has been launched into the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) after Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration was found to have sent billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money to a fraudulent solar company. Biden’s DOE recently gave a $3 billion award to a solar energy company that has been accused of scamming vulnerable customers. Republican leaders in the House and Senate are probing the DOE over the move. The investigations are being led by House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY). In a letter to DOE...

Investments in renewable energy resources across the U.S. continue to grow, supported by increased federal funding, legislation that improves project economics, and growing demand for cleaner energy. Deloitte, which provides insights and solutions for several industries including the energy sector, on Dec. 5 released its industry outlook for 2024 for renewable energy in the U.S., highlighting opportunities for growth in the clean energy sector while also noting continued challenges for renewable deployment. The group said measures such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) have supported renewable energy while also bringing new issues....

Colorado-based cooperative Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association will accelerate the closure of a coal-fired unit in the northwestern part of CO, and announced a retirement date for an Arizona coal plant. Tri-State said it wants to acquire at least another 1,250 MW of renewable energy generation over the next several years. The not-for-profit company, which serves rural electricity consumers across four western states, said the ERP filed with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission seeks to take advantage of funding from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s $9.7 billion Empowering Rural America program, part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. The...

It could usher an era of limitless clean, safe and affordable energy to meet the world's demand. Now, the 'holy grail' of power production – nuclear fusion, which makes the sun and the stars shine – has come a step closer. Scientists have switched on JT-60SA, a £500 million fusion device measuring around 40 feet in diameter, located in Naka north of Tokyo, Japan. JT-60SA contains swirling plasma heated up 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit). This is the threshold where hydrogen atoms can begin to fuse into helium, releasing sustainable energy in the process that could put...

16 Million Trees Cut Down to Make Way for Wind Farms, Scottish National Party RevealsNearly 16 million carbon-catching trees have been cut down in Scotland since 2000 – in order to erect carbon-saving wind turbines – the Scottish National Party (SNP) admitted last week. An estimated 15.7 million trees – or about 1,700 per day – have been cut down on public land managed by Forestry and Land Scotland, Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon revealed in a letter to Scottish Tory MSP (Member of Scottish Parliament) Liam Kerr, who called the news “astonishing.” Sacrificing trees to build wind farms...

Sweden, long the darling of progressives for its climate change policies, has gone nuclear on the green scheme. On Tuesday, the Swedish parliament made a language change with major reverberations in the energy sector, according to Reuters. Parliament set the nation’s goal to become “100% fossil-free” electricity, instead of “100% renewable” as a way to both reach the growing electric power demand it projects for 2040 and achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2045. “This creates the conditions for nuclear power,” Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said. “We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity and we need...

The blight on the landscape of abandoned and decommissioned wind turbines stimulated Colorado's U.S. Reps. Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn and Harriet Hageman, Wyoming, to introduce the Production Tax Credit Reform Act. According to a press release, the bill amends the Internal Revenue Code to require energy companies remove decommissioned wind turbines from leased land as a condition of receiving federal tax credits. Currently energy companies are not obligated to remove wind turbines from leased land once they are decommissioned, putting the onus on landowners — typically farmers and ranchers — to remove the turbines. According to the United States Geological...

Make electricity unreliable and unaffordable and you’ll soon turn your economy to ashes. Australia is on the brink of a major recession, and energy costs are front and centre. Power prices will jump by 25 to 30% next month following the closure of yet another perfectly operable 2,000MW coal-fired power plant. Since the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target was ramped up by the Labor government in 2010, Australians have been hit with double-digit percentage increases in their power bills every year since. Households are being hammered by rising interest rates and power bills that they simply cannot afford. Then there...

Scottish Power admitted 71 of its windmills were hooked up to the fossil fuel supply after a fault developed with their power supply. Dozens of giant turbines on Scotland’s windfarms have been powered by diesel generators, the Sunday Mail can reveal. Scottish Power admitted 71 of its windmills were hooked up to the fossil fuel supply after a fault developed on the grid. The firm said it was forced to act in order to keep the turbines warm during very cold weather in December. But a whistleblower has told the Sunday Mail the incident is among a number of environmental...

BILLINGS, Mont. — A wind energy company was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed over the past decade at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a Tuesday court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was charged in the deaths of eagles at three of its wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico. In addition to those deaths, golden and bald eagles were killed...

Irish wind farms had a strong start to the year with a new record for the most electricity ever produced in the month of January. The January Wind Energy Report showed that 41% of the country’s power came from wind last month, up 9% on January 2022. However, the industry warned delays in the planning system were slowing the delivery of new wind farms. Wind farms produced 1,479 gigawatt-hours of electricity last month, up 200 GWh on the previous January best, and the seventh best month on record for wind power. This is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of...

OSAKA -- Japan's Sumitomo Electric Industries plans to build a new battery plant in North America as the U.S. accelerates its shift to sustainable energy, Nikkei has learned. Sumitomo wants to produce large-capacity batteries called "redox flow cells" which are used to store electricity generated by wind turbines and other forms of renewable energy. The batteries are less prone to degradation than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Their battery life of up to 30 years is expected to be twice as long as that of lithium-ion batteries. The battery market in North America is expected to expand to 1.7 trillion yen ($12.9...

As California goes, so goes the nation, or so they say. If that rings true, the nation is set for a reversal of some of its strictest renewable energy plans, after the Huntington Beach City Council voted to dump its plan for 100% renewable energy...Huntington Beach, California, is changing the plan it had in place with the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) - a nonprofit offering clean energy.But its recent history in a rather unfavorable media limelight has given the city council pause.And Huntington Beach wasn’t the first municipality to pull out - Orange County bailed on the green power...

The brutal, unrelenting cold that lasted for several days over the Christmas holiday froze off a sizable portion of Appalachia’s ample gas production, cutting off supply to power plants when they needed it most. Gas transmission pipelines said the gas they were promised simply didn’t show up. On the electric grid that connects Pennsylvania to 12 other states, at one point almost 25% of the capacity on the system either didn’t start up or broke while operating, leaving coal and petroleum-fired units to pick up the slack. PJM, a Valley Forge-based grid operator, is still analyzing what happened during the...

EXCERPT: BIDEN: “These MCC investments are part of the work we’re doing worldwide through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. I proposed this initiative together with the rest of the G7 to help fill the need for quality high-standard infrastructure in Africa and the low-income and middle-income countries around the world. At the G-7 meeting earlier this year, we announced our intention to collectively mobilize $600 billion in the next five years. Today’s announcement joined a portfolio of Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment projects already underway in Africa, including mobilizing $8 billion in public and private finance to help...

HARRISBURG – The General Assembly has sent the governor legislation that will create a new program to encourage the development of technology to convert fracked gas into hydrogen through $141.6 million a year in tax credits. The approval of House Bill 1059 came over the objections of environmental groups and some Democrats who said that the plan will keep Pennsylvania invested in fossil fuel production for decades even as much of the world turns toward renewable energy. “State lawmakers have clearly not learned from example after example of broken promises,” said former Secretary of Environmental Protection Patrick McDonnell, now the...

For decades now we have been inundated with propaganda that insists we move away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives.The hysteria has been escalating ever since Al Gore rebranded himself the Global Warming Ambassador at Large with the release of An Inconvenient Truth. What had been a constant but relatively muted refrain from the Left became a unstoppable roar that has only increased in volume. We have been treated to lectures about biofuels from switchgrass (remember that–never happened), the new hydrogen future (never happened), solar, wind, and unicorn farts all powering the future.We are called to save the sinking islands...

Vanity, European governments have had decades to construct and deploy solar panels and windmills, and didn't (at least not enough to at least supply enough power for home electric heaters). Yet they went ahead with Electric Vehicle mandates, which are powered by (mostly) fossil fuels.