July 5, 2018 10:23 AM EDT
I’ve written previously about my family’s experience with black lung and how the disease is making a frightening resurgence. A bit like a miner’s headlamp in the darkness, two recent federal reports and several federal scientific studies shine a light on the disease and its implications—and policymakers should take notice.
April 10, 2018 9:40 AM EDT
A few months ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) made a request to one of its national labs, the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), to study the impacts on the electricity grid of a severe cold snap called the bomb cyclone that hit the Northeast in early January 2018. NETL conducts important R&D on fossil energy technologies. The report released last week uses deeply flawed assumptions to inaccurately paint coal (and to a lesser extent, fuel oil) as the savior that prevented large-scale blackouts during the extreme cold, while greatly understating the contribution from renewable energy sources. It also estimates a bogus value for coal providing these so-called “resiliency” services. One has to wonder whether this deeply flawed and misleading study is part of the administration’s continued attempts to prop up the coal industry at all costs Read more >
March 21, 2018 10:24 AM EDT
On Thursday morning, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies (within the Committee on Appropriations) will hold a hearing on applied energy funding for the FY 2019 budget. (The FY 2018 budget, which goes until the end of September, is being finalized this week in order to avoid a government shutdown on Friday.) We’ll see a parade of undersecretaries and assistant secretaries of the applied energy technology offices within the Department of Energy (DOE)—all of whom are political appointees—attempt to justify their boss’s proposal seeking to gut R&D funding for clean energy and low carbon technologies. Read more >
March 16, 2018 3:19 PM EDT
My grandfather was the son of Italian immigrants—many of whom settled in north central West Virginia to work in the coal mines. He worked hard his whole life and built a better life for himself and our family. According to family legend, he famously told my grandmother early in their courtship, “Stick with me, and you’ll wear diamonds.” She did.
My grandfather died of black lung disease in 1988.
Thirty years later, there’s no way that other families should be going through what mine and so many others have. And yet today the disease is making a strong and frightening resurgence. How is black lung related to economic development and mine reclamation? It turns out Congress has an opportunity to address all three by passing the RECLAIM Act—but only if leaders don’t take their eyes off the ball. Read more >
February 13, 2018 10:24 AM EDT
Today, the president released his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year (FY 2019) and as expected, it seeks to eviscerate research and development (R&D) in clean energy technology. The proposal would slash funding in the applied energy technology offices within the Department of Energy (DOE), now housed within the Office of Energy. As my colleague points out, the proposal is “not scaling back, it’s eviscerating the work,” and is another example of this administration’s attacks on clean energy. As the Nation needs to continue to develop and deploy clean energy technologies to solve the threats posed by climate change, hopefully Congress will do what it did last year: yawn, ignore the current administration’s ideologically driven proposal, and do what is best for the Nation.
