“We are proud to join the EPA team of dedicated career professionals,”
said Dan Utech, EPA’s incoming Chief of Staff. “EPA will be at the heart of President Biden’s commitment to protect public health and the environment while building a clean energy future that creates good paying jobs. We will be guided by science as we work together to achieve these goals on behalf of all Americans.”
EPA’s leadership team comes with a broad range of expertise and knowledge, including decades of experience in federal, state, and local governments; academia; and non-profit and advocacy organizations. The EPA team also reflects the Biden-Harris commitment to diversity. Additional members of the EPA appointee team will be named in the days and weeks to come.
Dive Brief:
Despite setting goals to decarbonize their resource mix, many utility pledges amount to little more than meaningless greenwashing because power companies are not moving quickly enough to phase out fossil fuels and add clean energy, according to a new report and data set from Sierra Club.
The report grades utility decarbonization efforts based on coal plant retirement schedules, plans to add gas-fired capacity, and clean energy investment. Some utilities with carbon-neutral pledges received a failing grade using Sierra Club s methodology.
The utility sector defended its approach to the decarbonization process. The goals we have are a reflection of our current understanding of technology and economics, said Emily Fisher, senior vice president of clean energy at Edison Electric Institute.
Joshua Roberts/Getty Images News
TAGGED FOR EPA: Michael Regan has been named by the Biden Administration to head EPA. His confirmation hearings are to begin soon. A large group of ag organizations are supporting his nomination. Incoming EPA staff not requiring Senate confirmation loaded with litigation experience in advancing environmental justice agenda.
A diverse group of 23 agricultural groups wrote Senate Environment and Public Works leaders in support of Michael Regan who’s been nominated to serve as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Currently, a nomination hearing date has not been set for Regan.
“As Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Michael Regan has an established record of listening to all stakeholders, including farmers and ranchers,” states the letter to incoming EPW Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., and Ranking Member Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va. “During his tenure, he has worke
Dive Brief:
The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) and Washington State Department of Commerce announced Tuesday that they adopted rules in late December to guide implementation of the state s 2019 Clean Energy Transformation Act.
Under the law, electric utilities in Washington must eliminate coal-fired power by 2025, achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, and source 100% of their energy from renewable or non-carbon emitting sources by 2045.
While Washington utilities and environmental groups welcomed the overarching goals presented by the rules, disagreement about specifics remains. We have an opportunity to finally account for climate impacts in electricity planning and acquisition of new resources, Doug Howell, a senior campaign representative in Seattle for the Sierra Club s Beyond Coal Campaign, said in an email. How we deal with this in electricity will hopefully end up applying to other sectors, [which] is why it is so important to get it right.
Coal ash. Itâs a burden that has been decades in the making, but has only recently been dealt with by the utility plants it has fueled.
Now some local residents are worried that it might end up in a landfill near them, even though the landfillâs developers have repeatedly said they would not accept coal ash.
Solid Solutions Development, the company proposing the Haralson County landfill, has said that it will not accept out-of-state waste in general and will not accept coal ash or sewer sludge at all.
Those conditions will be written into the agreement with the community, said Tee Stribling, one of the founders of the firm. That cannot be changed, he said. It will be written into the application for the permit and it will be written into the zoning.