Sarah Palin for Interior secretary? Her name is among those being mentioned for top environment and energy posts in the incoming Trump administration. To help you cover the shaping of the new cabinet, the latest TipSheet runs down better-known and lesser-known candidates being floated for EPA, Interior, Energy and Agriculture department chiefs.
"A small island in American Samoa is making the switch from diesel generators to 100 percent renewable energy. Ta’u, the easternmost of the Samoan islands, has just been equipped with a new microgrid with 1.4 megawatts of solar-generation capacity and six megawatt hours of battery storage. It’s enough to power the entire island night and day. "
"Recent discoveries of illegal, unreported oil discharges and systematic dumping of chemicals from rigs and platforms have raised new fears about environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico, more than six years after the worst oil spill in U.S. history."
"The Obama administration signed its final plan for renewable fuel use in the United States last week, leaving an oil industry reeling from the most aggressive biofuel targets yet as President-elect Donald Trump takes over. ... The policy was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions ....It has pitted two of Trump's support bases against each other: Big Oil and Big Corn."
"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers notified the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Friday that the public will not be allowed in areas being used to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline."
"In a video released Monday, president-elect Donald Trump pledged that in his first 100 days in office he would abolish a host of regulations to stimulate domestic energy production. 'I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal, creating many millions of high-paying jobs,' he said."
"In the debate over fracking of oil and gas wells, opponents often cite the risk that the process can set off nearby earthquakes. But scientists say that in the United States, fracking-induced earthquakes are not common."
With newsrooms well down the digital path, data journalism is increasingly becoming a standard toolset reporters must master. Our latest Reporter's Toolbox is a four-step primer designed to help you use readily available tools to collect, clean up and analyze data, then use it to tell your stories. Image: © Clipart.com
"The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday gave an impassioned defense of the Obama administration’s energy and environmental policies and insisted the nation’s shift from fossil fuels will continue no matter who occupies the White House."
"Donald J. Trump made coal a centerpiece of his campaign, holding rousing rallies with miners in hard hats, who he said had been neglected under eight years of the Obama administration. ... Now, though, coal may prove a different sort of symbol — that is, of the challenges that the president-elect will face delivering on his many promises to restore struggling sectors of the American economy."
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