Public

"On a warm day last spring, dozens of protesters gathered outside a shopping center on the west side of Hawaii’s Big Island. They weren’t there to boycott a store or a pipeline or to deride a politician. They came to revolt against a new ban on feeding cats in the parking lot. “Stop starving the cats,” the protesters chanted, according to a local newspaper."

"A rule published by the Trump administration removed protections for 21 percent of streams and 25 percent of wetlands that otherwise could have received federal protection, new research has found."

"One of the objections to utility-scale solar power that I hear most often is that local communities will be left to cover the costs of cleanup at the end of a project’s life. But state and local rules in nearly all of the country are clear about who pays: The developer or the owner is responsible for restoring the land once a project is no longer operating."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on Thursday finalized their strategy on the protection of endangered North Atlantic right whales in the offshore wind power development process."

"A new study is part of an emerging field of tree-ring science that found the West’s two-decade drought is inextricably linked to rising temperatures".

"Canada’s tar sands have gained infamy for being one of the world’s most polluting sources of oil, thanks to the large amounts of energy and water use required for their extraction. A new study says the operations are also emitting far higher levels of a range of air pollutants than previously known, with implications for communities living nearby and far downwind."

"The largest combined solar and energy-storage project in the U.S. is now online and operating in California’s Mojave Desert." "The new California installation has nearly 2 million solar panels, more than 120,000 batteries, and an enormous amount of clean energy capacity."

"On Wednesday, LanzaJet marked the opening of its Freedom Pines Fuels facility, which uses novel technology to convert ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF. The $200 million biorefinery is the first in the world to deploy an ​“alcohol-to-jet” process, one that the company claims can curb greenhouse gas emissions by over 70 percent compared to conventional jet fuel."

"A Brazilian federal judge ruled that miners Vale, BHP and their joint venture Samarco must pay 47.6 billion reais ($9.67 billion) in damages for a 2015 tailings dam burst, according to a legal decision on Thursday seen by Reuters."