Energy & Fuel

"On Jan. 20, the U.S. Department of the Navy will host a kickoff event, launching the first vessels of its Great Green Fleet at the San Diego Naval Air Station North Island, Carrier Pier. The GGF centerpiece is a carrier strike group—including an aircraft carrier and Arleigh Burke-class destroyer—deploying using energy conservation technologies, operating procedures and alternative energy in the course of its regular scheduled deployment in 2016."

"In Oklahoma, now the country's earthquake capital, people are talking nervously about the big one as man-made quakes get stronger, more frequent and closer to major population centers. Next door in Kansas, they're feeling on firmer ground though no one is ready yet to declare victory."

"Public enemy No. 1 for climate change and no longer the fossil fuel utilities prefer to burn to generate electricity, coal has few allies these days. But one state is still fighting to save the industry: Wyoming."

"With international sanctions lifted, the Iranian government called on its oil industry Monday to open the taps on production, a move that could add to a global glut of crude that has sent prices into a tailspin."

"In a high-stakes power play, tribal nations are taking up the fight against fuel-transport proposals, from the biggest coal-export terminal in North America at Cherry Point to oil-pipeline expansions in British Columbia."

"In 2012, an NAACP analysis found that Americans living within 3 miles of a coal plant are disproportionately low-income and disproportionately non-white."

"For the past five years, President Obama has denied the Republican charge that he is waging a war on coal. On Friday, with the Obama administration’s announcement that the Interior Department will halt new coal leases on public lands, Mr. Obama acknowledged that his climate change polices are hurting American miners and began offering ways to ease that economic harm."

"Too often toxic coal ash, a byproduct of coal-fired power, ends up in poor, minority communities. U.S. civil rights officials are launching a deeper look at federal environmental policy to find out why."

"The gloomier outlook for U.S. coal companies is raising questions about who will pay to clean up shuttered strip mines and open pits across coal country. With financial woes piling up for coal producers, environmental groups are warning that taxpayers could be on the hook for millions in restoration costs if mining companies can’t pick up the bill."

"The utility whose leaking natural gas well has driven thousands of Los Angeles residents from their homes acknowledged that it understated the number of times airborne levels of the cancer-causing chemical benzene have spiked during the crisis."