Fossil fuel

This morning, I received an exciting press release from the Department of Energy: The federal agency now has a strategy in place to significantly expand the U.S.’s offshore wind capacity. Under the shiny new “Advancing Offshore Wind...” plan, the DOE hopes to support the Biden administration’s existing goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.This Summer’s Hottest UmbrellaWow, sounds great! We love a clear roadmap for a federal agency. Plus, if we make it to 40 GW of offshore wind, that would be…

The United Nations wants Big Oil to have a seat at the table when it comes to climate solutions—an idea kind of like inviting a fox into a henhouse.On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its blockbuster new report, which sets some firm goals. To stave off the worst impacts of climate change, we need emissions to peak over the next two years and to cut emissions a whopping 65% by 2035. We’ve, essentially, got a little over a decade to seriously move away fromfossil fuel use. Longer-term…

Don’t worry, helpless insurance companies: the Texas Legislature is here to protect you from big, bad environmentalists. A Texas state senator said during a panel discussion last week at a conference put on by a prominent climate-denier think tank that the state legislature would focus on rolling out legislation this year to punish insurance companies trying to divest from fossil fuels. The big target is ESG, or environmental, social, and governance, a strategy companies can use to make ethical investments.During a panel…

If you’re watching HGTV or Netflix, there’s a chance that you might run into a show hosted by an influencer who shills for the natural gas industry. An industry group is using federally sanctioned funds that are supposed to go to consumer education to pay for influencers and celebrities to promote natural gas and smear home electrification, the New York Times reported last week.Documents obtained by the New York Times and the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group, show that the Propane Education and Research…

The Los Angeles City Council opted to end oil and gas drilling within the city’s limits in a historic Friday vote. The decision was unanimous, with 12-0 in favor of a draft ordinance phasing out existing fossil fuel wells and banning new ones. LA will end all of its current oil and gas drilling within the next 20 years,and no new in-city extraction operations will be approved.“When this ordinance goes into place, there will be no new oil and gas production whatsoever,” council member Paul Krekorian said during the…

Container ships in a port in Hamburg, Germany.Photo: Daniel Bockwoldt/picture-alliance/dpa (AP)It may be tempting to load up on online shopping deals this Black Friday—but before you order a whole new wardrobe or electronics setup, take a moment to think about the trip all those packages may take. International shipping to bring all that stuff to your door is responsible for almost 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And as the world’s online shopping addiction grows bigger and bigger, the problem only gets worse:…

The entrance to COP27.Photo: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP (Getty Images)Tens of thousands of people are gathering in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for the annual UN climate change conference this month—and that includes hundreds of representatives from the fossil fuel industry who are sitting in on the talks and outnumbering representatives from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, a new analysis has found.03:26Segment of Challenger Space Shuttle Found at Bottom of Atlantic Ocean2 hours agoAt last year’s UN climate meeting,…

Workers stand in front of stacked pipes for a natural gas pipeline.Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty Images)The most powerful countries in the world keepratcheting up public funding for fossil fuel projects and increasing emissions—despite the fact that continued investment in dirty fuels could push us beyond the warming targets laid out in the Paris Agreement.Last year, the G20, which is composed of 19 of the world’s wealthiest countries and the European Union, ramped up funding for dirty fuels by a stunning 29%, a new report…

Gas prices on October 03, 2022 in San Bruno, California.Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)It can be hard to understand what the hell is going on with the global energy market. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March, the news has been a non-stop churn of confusing updates about oil prices, gas supply, and a stew of acronyms (OPEC? SPR?). The whole thing can be intimidating to think about, even to energy reporters and folks who think about this issue professionally. “It’s one of the most confusing and…

Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.Minneapolis, Minnesota, became the third U.S. city to endorse a carbon neutrality goal for shipping earlier this month, joining the California cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach in unanimously passing a so-called “Ship It Zero” resolution.Minneapolis’ resolution takes aim at corporate maritime importers like Walmart, Amazon, and Ikea. It asks them to “abandon fossil-fueled ships” — most of which…