"Interior Department officials enter a thicket this year overgrown with tough choices, evergreen litigation and plenty of political heat no matter which direction they go."
"Study after study has found the country can’t build renewable energy at the pace needed to rapidly decarbonize the power grid without also building a massive amount of new power lines, fast. But over the past half-decade, grid growth has slowed, not accelerated, bogged down by conflicts over siting, permitting and paying for new transmission capacity."
"The Biden administration is negotiating with hydrogen industry leaders on legally binding commitments involving tens of thousands of new jobs and lower emissions, a pledge crucial to winning community support and achieving US environmental justice goals."
"Officials in Youngstown, Ohio, have dealt a setback to a company’s plan to build and operate a recycled tire waste-to-energy plant near the center of the city and adjacent to a neighborhood of predominantly Black residents, enacting a one-year moratorium on such industrial processes."
"Industrial developers describe facilities as “minor” polluters to avoid federal permitting requirements, and environmental lawyers say the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality lets it happen."
"With aquifers nationwide in dangerous decline, one part of California has tried essentially taxing groundwater. New research shows it’s working."
"The Biden administration pushed through a packed clean air to-do list in 2023, shoring up against a tougher legal landscape and multiple courtroom battles that threaten to delay cornerstone air and climate plans."
"It’s officially an election year, which means politics — and the prospect of another White House showdown pitting President Joe Biden against former President Donald Trump — will influence just about everything in the energy and environmental arena between now and Election Day on Nov. 5."
"Six hundred and forty-three. That’s how many freedom of information requests our journalists at The Narwhal filed across the country in 2023 as they dug deep to uncover information governments would otherwise keep secret."
"The Biden administration is handing Louisiana regulators new power to attract and approve carbon capture projects at a time when the state’s influential energy sector wants to make the Gulf Coast a hub for the rapidly expanding industry.'
