Plans for two new U.S. facilities that will use hydrogen instead of coal to make steel hold the promise of decarbonizing this essential but dirty industry. But don’t expect overnight change. Reporter Maria Gallucci looks at the complexities of making the switch, from ditching the blast furnace to reducing pollution all along the supply chain.
"The U.S. government has a specialized plane loaded with advanced sensors that officials brag is always ready to deploy within an hour of any kind of chemical disaster. But the plane didn’t fly over eastern Ohio until four days after the disastrous Norfolk Southern derailment there last year."
"Wendella engineer Miguel Chavez climbed down a ladder and over a small dock to pull up a trap floating in the Chicago River near the Michigan Avenue Bridge. The size of a standard garbage can, the trap is designed to collect trash and can hold up to 44 pounds."
"In one Chicago suburb, people have been waiting for relief for years."
"Several dozen young people wearing light blue T-shirts imprinted with #teachclimate filled a hearing room in the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul in late February. It was a cold and windy day, in contrast to the state’s nearly snowless, warm winter."
"One of the largest solar projects in the country is moving closer to completion, and it’s not in a famously sunny state like California, Texas, or even Florida. It’s in Minnesota, on former potato farms near the site of a retiring coal plant."
Hundreds of hydropower dams in the United States will see their licenses expiring in the next decade, generating years-long federal relicensing processes. That prospect calls for close local and regional coverage of the complicated balance between renewable energy needs with negative environmental impacts. The latest TipSheet explains the licensing process and the dam backstory, along with a dozen story ideas and reporting resources.
"A dark money group funded by FirstEnergy spent $2.5 million to support the GOP hopeful as the utility pushed bailout of struggling nuclear plants."
"The Biden administration straddled the line on a controversial Canadian oil pipeline in a court filing Wednesday, saying a lower court’s order to drain portions running through tribal land may violate a 1977 treaty but agreeing with a Native American tribe that the operator is trespassing on tribal land."
"A surge in FirstEnergy political spending ahead of the utility’s push to secure a legislative bailout for its nuclear power plants included a $1 million dark money contribution to support the campaign of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s eventual running mate."
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