"Biden Administration Announces $8.25B In Loans To Boost Power Grid"
"The Biden administration is taking several actions to boost the power grid, it announced Tuesday, including up to $8.25 billion in new Energy Department loans."
EJToday is a daily weekday digest of top environment/energy news and information of interest to environmental journalists, independently curated by Editor Joseph A. Davis. Sign up below to receive in your inbox. For queries, email EJToday@SEJ.org. For more info, read an EJToday FAQ. Plus, follow EJToday on social media at @EJTodayNews, and flag stories of note by including the @EJTodayNews handle on your posts. And tell us how to make EJToday even better by taking this brief survey.
Want to join the EJToday team? Volunteer time commitments can vary from just an hour a month up to a daily contribution, and would involve helping to curate content of interest. To learn more, reach out to the director of publications, Adam Glenn, at sejournaleditor@sej.org.
Note: Members have additional options to choose from (you'll need your log-in info).
"The Biden administration is taking several actions to boost the power grid, it announced Tuesday, including up to $8.25 billion in new Energy Department loans."
"Bitcoin? Blasé. Gold? Going out of style. “The hottest commodity on the planet,” according to Dustin Jalbert, an economist at the market-research firm Fastmarkets, is lumber." "Blame climate change, wildfires, hungry beetles … and Millennial home buyers."
"Competing legislative pitches for extending and reforming the nation's debt-hampered flood insurance program are about to hit Capitol Hill — bringing debates over climate change and risk, equity and cost, and the role of federal subsidies."
"The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Janet McCabe as the No. 2 official at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)."
"Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be more than 25,000 barrels that possibly contain DDT dumped off the Southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to World War II has long been suspected."
"Donald Trump called climate change “a Chinese hoax” and said global emissions goals would be “very hard on our business.” But when the former president pulled the U.S. out of the Paris accord in 2017, there was no celebrating in the C-suite."
"The Interior Department on Tuesday moved to make it easier for tribal nations to place lands into trust, reversing several Trump-era actions that it says undermined tribal sovereignty."
"California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the state."
"When EPA Administrator Michael Regan fired every member of two science advisory panels in March, he was trying to send an unequivocal message: It's a new day for scientific integrity."
"The last time periodical cicadas emerged in Washington, blanketing sidewalks and lawns with their large shiny bodies and creating a deafening chorus, John Kerry was running for president, Barack Obama was an obscure state senator, and Donald Trump was praising Democrats on CNN."
"A major United Nations report will declare that slashing emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, is far more vital than previously thought."
"In 2015, the United States agreed to slash its greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Paris climate accord. Then it elected Donald Trump as president. That experience raises the question of whether the U.S. can follow through on President Biden's ambitious pledge to halve emissions in the next decade."
"'This rule that was designed to prevent you from counting carbon twice has effectively become a rule in which no carbon is counted at all.'"
"With the U.S. back in the Paris Agreement, and with governments across the country evaluating how they can cut carbon emissions, a question remains about one contentious 'carbon neutral' energy source: wood pellets.
"Heavy rains have dispersed highly toxic dioxins throughout the Sanders Beach neighborhood for years. Now residents hope the Biden administration will help put an end to their misery."
"The Environmental Protection Agency recently acknowledged what was plain to most outside observers throughout the Trump era. “Over the past few years, I am aware that political interference sometimes compromised the integrity of our science,” Michal Freedhoff, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, wrote it in a March 10 internal memo."