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    Democratic-led states sue Trump for blocking wind energy projects

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    A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general sued on Monday in an attempt to block Donald Trump’s move to suspend leasing and permitting of new wind projects, saying it threatens to cripple the wind industry and a key source of clean energy.Seventeen states and the District of Columbia argued, in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston, that the decision by the Republican president’s administration to indefinitely pause all federal wind-energy approvals was unlawful and must be blocked.Trump announced the pause on his first day back in office on 20 January when he directed his administration to halt offshore wind lease sales and stop the issuance of permits, leases and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects.“This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable and affordable energy,” the New York attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, said in a statement.The lawsuit seeks a court order declaring the indefinite pause unlawful and barring the agencies including the US Departments of Commerce and Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from implementing Trump’s directive.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Meanwhile, attorneys general in 19 states and DC are challenging cuts to the US Health and Human Services (HHS) agency, saying the Trump administration’s massive restructuring has destroyed life-saving programs and left states to pick up the bill for mounting health crises, the Associated Press reported.The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Monday, the New York attorney general said.The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, restructured the agency in March, eliminating more than 10,000 employees and collapsing 28 agencies under the sprawling HHS umbrella into 15, the attorneys general said. An additional 10,000 employees had already been let go by the Trump’s administration, according to the lawsuit, and combined the cuts stripped 25% of the HHS workforce. More

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      How a solar storm could lead to a US nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl | Mark Leyse

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      On 14 May 1921, a powerful solar storm – called the New York Railroad storm – caused the northern lights to illuminate New York City’s night sky. On Broadway, crowds lingered, enjoying “flaring skies” that remained undimmed by city lights. The following morning, excess electric currents shut down the New York Central Railroad’s signal and switching system in Manhattan, stopping trains. A fire broke out in a railroad control tower that was located at Park Avenue and 57th Street. Smoke filled the air. Along a stretch of Park Avenue, residents “were coughing and choking from the suffocating vapors which spread for blocks”.When a solar storm’s electrically charged particles envelop Earth, they cause geomagnetic storms that generate electric fields in the ground, inducing electric currents in power grids. Solar storms as intense as the 1921 superstorm have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario in which modern power grids, communication systems, and other infrastructures collapse for months. Such a collapse of power grids would likely also lead to nuclear power plant accidents, whose radioactive emissions would aggravate the overall catastrophe.Scientists estimate that solar storms powerful enough to collapse portions of modern power grids for months may hit Earth more often than once in a century. In July 2012, a solar superstorm, estimated to have been more intense than the New York Railroad storm, crossed Earth’s orbit, missing the planet by one week’s time.The east coast states, upper midwest, and Pacific north-west have geological characteristics – not predominant in other regions of the United States – that increase the vulnerability of power-grid infrastructures to solar storms. Unfortunately, the majority of the commercial nuclear power plants in the United States are located in east coast states and the upper midwest, two of the US regions that are most vulnerable to solar storm-induced blackouts.In a months-long blackout, nuclear plants would lose their supply of offsite electricity, which is necessary for their safe operation. Emergency diesel generators, which provide backup electricity, are designed to power cooling pumps for a number of days – not months. No nuclear plant in the United States has ever lost offsite electricity for longer than a week. In 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated that an extreme solar storm could collapse power grids and potentially lead to reactor core damage at multiple nuclear plants.Storage pools at nuclear plants that house spent fuel assemblies, encasing nuclear waste, are also vulnerable to accidents. Spent fuel assemblies can overheat and catch fire, dispersing radioactive material into the environment, if a storage pool’s coolant water is lost.Spent fuel assemblies are so thermally hot and radioactive that they must be submerged in circulating water and cooled in a storage pool for years. Storage pools at US nuclear plants typically contain about six reactor core loads of nuclear fuel and are almost as densely packed with fuel assemblies as operating reactors – hazards that vastly increase the odds of a major accident.A spent fuel fire in an exposed, densely packed storage pool could potentially release 10 times as much caesium-137 as the Chornobyl accident is estimated to have released. Such a disaster could contaminate thousands of square miles of land and expose millions of people to large doses of ionizing radiation, many of whom might die from early or latent cancer.By contrast, if a thinly packed storage pool were deprived of coolant water, its spent fuel would likely release about 1% of the radioactive material estimated to be released by a spent fuel fire at a densely packed pool.Sufficiently cooled spent fuel assemblies can be transferred from a storage pool to dry cask storage; that is, passively cooled, liquid-free containers of steel and concrete that shield people from ionizing radiation. The inevitability of a nationwide power grid collapse that would lead to multiple nuclear disasters and untold human suffering emphasizes the need to transfer spent fuel assemblies to dry cask storage as quickly as possible.Promptly transferring the nationwide inventories of spent fuel assemblies that have been cooled for at least five years from US storage pools to dry cask storage would be “relatively inexpensive” – less than a total of $5.5bn. The economic cost of losing vast tracts of urban and rural land for generations to come because of radioactive contamination would be far more expensive.Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced the Dry Cask Storage Act in 2014, calling to outlaw the practice of overloading spent fuel pools. The act, which Markey has reintroduced in subsequent congressional sessions, has not passed into law. The nuclear industry’s mismanagement of spent fuel must stop. Congress needs to pass legislation requiring the owners of nuclear plants to swiftly thin out spent fuel pools.

      Mark Leyse is a nuclear power safety advocate More

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      Fifteen years after Deepwater Horizon, Trump is setting the stage for disaster | Terry Garcia

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      Last month, I joined nearly 500 former and current employees of National Geographic, where I was executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years, urging the institution to take a public stance against the Trump administration’s reckless attacks on science. Our letter pointed out that the programs being dismantled are “imperative for the success of our country’s economy and are the foundation of our progress and wellbeing. They make us safer, stronger and more prosperous.” We warned that gutting them is a recipe for disaster.In the face of this danger, none of us can remain silent.I say this from the unique perspective of having been closely involved in the two most significant environmental disasters in US history: the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. Fifteen years ago this Sunday, an enormous explosion tore through the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and unleashed an environmental catastrophe that devastated the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion triggered the release of more than 3m barrels of oil that polluted 1,300 miles of coastline from Louisiana to Florida. Eleven lives were lost, ecosystems were ravaged and the economic toll soared into the billions.I served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, which investigated the root causes of the disaster, and before that I led the federal government’s implementation of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Plan. I have witnessed first-hand the human and economic toll exacted by these events. Men and women who, for generations, had made a living from the sea were suddenly confronted with the possibility that an entire way of life would be lost.Despite such painful lessons of the past, we find ourselves once again hurtling toward disaster. The Trump administration’s personnel and programmatic cuts at science, environmental and safety agencies, and the wholesale rollback of environmental regulations, threaten to unravel decades of progress in safeguarding our country. These actions aren’t just misguided – they’re a dangerous rejection of the hard-won knowledge gained from former crises and a gamble we cannot afford to take.Among the many alarming moves by the Trump administration are plans to weaken offshore drilling safety measures implemented in response to the Deepwater Horizon calamity, such as the reversal of the Biden administration’s ban on drilling in sensitive coastal areas, including the Arctic, and the closure of regional offices responsible for oil spill response. Eliminating these measures demonstrates a callous disregard for lessons learned at a staggering human and economic cost.Disturbingly, these actions are but a small part of a larger effort to weaken environmental regulation and oversight under the guise of restoring government efficiency. Take the recent rollback of dozens of Environmental Protection Agency health and safety regulations and the reported plan to eliminate the agency’s scientific research office. The administration claims these moves will unleash US energy and lower the cost of living, when in fact the only thing they’re guaranteed to achieve is undermining fundamental protections that keep our air and water clean. The mass layoffs and plans to dismember the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), where I was deputy administrator from 1997 to the end of 1999 and prior to that its general counsel, have nothing to do with cost savings – they’re an outright assault on science. Targeting programs that monitor ocean health, track ecosystem changes and study climate impacts – essential to understanding and mitigating looming threats – will leave us blind to and defenseless against the dangers ahead.Cuts to science funding amplify the harms, jeopardizing our ability to innovate solutions, assess risks and respond effectively to crises. In 2010, we lacked even basic data about ocean conditions in areas around the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well. This absence of critical knowledge hindered response and recovery efforts, including understanding the impacts of using oil dispersants in the deep ocean. After the spill, robust government support for science enabled researchers to develop new response and cleanup technologies, better understand long-term ecological impacts, and provide critical insights that helped shape environmental and safety policy. Without government support, these advances would have been impossible – and they will be impossible in the future as funding is slashed.The Trump administration’s insistence that its actions will reduce bureaucratic burdens or spur economic growth is false and deliberately misleading. It’s gaslighting on a national scale. The only sure result is that the burden of risk will be shifted on to communities, small businesses and ordinary Americans. The destruction of habitats and livelihoods is not an abstract consequence of environmental disasters. They devastate families, cripple economies, poison food supplies and leave communities struggling for decades. Businesses are boarded up, and community members suffer life-altering health consequences. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, losses in commercial and recreational fishing, tourism and property values amounted to tens of billions of dollars; cleanup and restoration costs exceeded $60bn – far surpassing what preventive measures would have required.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump and his industry allies will paint such an event as an unforeseeable tragedy, a terrible mishap, a sad accident. Don’t buy it.As we mark this somber anniversary, we cannot allow the cautionary tales of Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon to fade into history, only to be repeated when the next horror strikes. Science and environmental protections are our first line of defense against catastrophe. Now is the time to demand that our government stop the madness and commit to strong environmental and safety regulations, rigorous scientific research, and adequate funding for the agencies tasked with protecting our health and shared resources. The price of ignoring science and dismantling regulations is far too high.

      Terry Garcia was National Geographic’s executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years. He also served as the assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and deputy administrator of Noaa, as well as its general counsel More

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      Will global climate action be a casualty of Trump’s tariffs?

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      Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.Fears of a prolonged global recession have also tanked oil and gas prices, making it cheaper to pollute and more difficult to justify investment in clean alternatives such as electric vehicles and low-carbon heating to financially hard-hit households.But chief among the concerns is Trump’s decision to level his most aggressive trade tariffs against China – the world’s largest manufacturer of clean energy technologies – which threatens to throttle green investment in the US, the world’s second-largest carbon-emitter.‘A tragedy for the US’The US is expected to lag farther behind the rest of the world in developing clean power technologies by cutting off its access to cheap, clean energy tech developed in China. This is a fresh blow to green energy developers in the US, still reeling from the Trump administration’s vow to roll back the Biden era’s green incentives.Leslie Abrahams, a deputy director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, said the tariffs would probably hinder the rollout of clean energy in the US and push the country to the margins of the global market.Specifically, they are expected to drive up the price of developing clean power, because to date the US has been heavily reliant on importing clean power technologies. “And not just imports of the final goods. Even the manufacturing that we do in the United States relies on imported components,” she said.The US government’s goal to develop its manufacturing base by opening new factories could make these components available domestically, but it is likely to take time. It will also come at considerable cost, because the materials typically imported to build these factories – cement, steel, aluminium – will be subject to tariffs too, Abrahams said.“At the same time there are broader, global economic implications that might make it difficult to access inexpensive capital to build,” she added. Investors who had previously shown an interest in the US under the green-friendly Biden administration are likely to balk at the aggressively anti-green messages from the White House.Abrahams said this would mean a weaker appetite for investment in rolling out green projects across the US, and in the research and development of early-stage clean technologies of the future. This is likely to have long-term implications for the US position in the global green energy market, meaning it will “cede some of our potential market share abroad”, Abrahams added.Instead, countries like China are likely to divert sales of their clean energy tech away from the US to other countries eager to develop green energy, Abrahams said. “So on the one hand, that should help to accelerate adoption of clean energy in those countries, which is good for emissions, but for the US, that is future market share that we’re ceding,” she said.‘Clean energy is unstoppable, with or without Trump’It’s important to distinguish between the US and the rest of the world, according to Kingsmill Bond, a strategist for the energy thinktank Ember.“The more the US cuts itself off from the rest of the world, the more the rest of the world will get on with things and the US will be left behind. This is a tragedy for the clean energy industry in the US, but for everyone else there are opportunities,” he said.Analysis by the climate campaign group 350.org has found that despite rising costs and falling green investment in the US, Trump’s trade war will not affect the energy transition and renewables trade globally.It said the US was already “merely a footnote, not a global player” in the race to end the use of fossil fuels. Only 4% of China’s clean tech exports go to the US, it said, in a trade sector where sales volume grew by about 30% last year.“Trump’s tariffs won’t slow the global energy transition – they’ll only hurt ordinary people, particularly Americans,” said Andreas Sieber, an associate director at 350.org. “The transition to renewables is unstoppable, with or without him. His latest move does little to impact the booming clean energy market but will isolate the US and drive up costs for American consumers.”View image in fullscreenOne senior executive at a big European renewable energy company said developers were likely to press on with existing US projects but in future would probablyinvest in other markets.“So we won’t be doing less, we’ll just be going somewhere else,” said the executive, who asked not to be named. “There is no shortage of demand for clean energy projects globally, so we’re not scaling back our ambitions. And excluding the US could make stretched supply chains easier to manage.”Countries likely to benefit from the fresh attention of renewable energy investors include burgeoning markets in south-east Asia, where fossil fuel reliance remains high and demand for energy is rocketing. Australia and Brazil have also emerged as countries that stand to gain.“In times like these, countries will be increasingly on the hunt for domestic solutions,” Bond said. “And that means clean energy and local supply chains. There are always climate reasons to go green, but there are national security reasons now too.”The challenge for governments hoping to seize the opportunity provided by the US green retreat will be to assure rattled investors that they offer a safe place to invest in the climate agenda.Dhara Vyas, the chief executive of Energy UK, the UK industry’s trade body, said: “Certainty has always been the thing that investors say they need. The UK is seen as a stable country with a stable government, but now more than ever we need to double down on giving certainty to investors.”“Investors do like certainty,” Bond agreed. “But they also like growth and opportunity, so that’s why there is some confidence that they will continue to deploy capital in the sector.”‘The US still matters’Although the green investment slowdown may be largely limited to the US, this still poses concerns for global climate progress, according to Marina Domingues, the head of new energies for the consultancy Rystad Energy.“The US is a huge emitter country. So everything the US does still really matters to the global energy transition and how we account for CO2,” she said. The US is the second most polluting country in the world, behind China, which produces almost three times its carbon emissions. But the US’s green retreat comes at a time when the country was planning to substantially increase its domestic energy demand.After years of relatively steady energy demand, Rystad predicts a 10% growth in US electricity consumption from a boom in AI datacentres alone. The economy is also likely to require more energy to power an increase in domestic manufacturing as imports from China dwindle.In the absence of a growing energy industry, this is likely to come from fossil fuels, meaning growing climate emissions. The US is expected to make use of its abundance of shale gas, but it is planning to use more coal in the future too.In the same week that Trump set out his tariffs, he signed four executive orders aimed at preventing the US from phasing out coal, in what climate campaigners at 350.org described as an “abuse of power”.Anne Jellema, the group’s executive director, said: “President Trump’s latest attempt to force-feed coal to the US is a dangerous fantasy that endangers our health, our economy and our future.” More

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      Trump signs orders to allow coal-fired power plants to remain open

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      Donald Trump signed four executive orders on Tuesday aimed at reviving coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel that has long been in decline, and which substantially contributes to planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.Environmentalists expressed dismay at the news, saying that Trump was stuck in the past and wanted to make utility customers “pay more for yesterday’s energy”.The US president is using emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants scheduled for retirement to keep producing electricity.The move, announced at a White House event on Tuesday afternoon, was described by White House officials as being in response to increased US power demand from growth in datacenters, artificial intelligence and electric cars.Trump, standing in front of a group of miners in hard hats, said he would sign an executive order “that slashes unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful, clean coal”.He added that “we will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands”, “streamline permitting”, “end the government bias against coal” and use the Defense Production Act “to turbocharge coal mining in America”.The first order directed all departments and agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry” including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land and accelerate all permitted funding for coal projects.The second imposes a moratorium on the “unscientific and unrealistic policies enacted by the Biden administration” to protect coal power plants currently operating.The third promotes “grid security and reliability” by ensuring that grid policies are focused on “secure and effective energy production” as opposed to “woke” policies that “discriminate against secure sources of power like coal and other fossil fuels”.The fourth instructs the justice department to “vigorously pursue and investigate” the “unconstitutional” policies of “radically leftist states” that “discriminate against coal”.Trump’s approach is in contrast to that of his predecessor Joe Biden, who in May last year brought in new climate rules requiring huge cuts in carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants that some experts said were “probably terminal” for an industry that until recently provided most of the US’s power, but is being driven out of the sector by cheaper renewables and gas.Trump, a Republican, has long promised to boost what he calls “beautiful” coal to fire power plants and for other uses, but the industry has been in decline for decades.The EPA under Trump last month announced a barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits, including seeking to overturn the Biden-era plan to reduce the number of coal plants.The orders direct the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands and to require federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the nation away from coal production.The orders also seek to promote coal and coal technology exports and to accelerate development of coal technologies.Trump has long suggested that coal can help meet surging electricity demand from manufacturing and the massive datacenters needed for artificial intelligence.“Nothing can destroy coal. Not the weather, not a bomb – nothing,” Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by video link in January. “And we have more coal than anybody.”Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper and there is a durable market for renewable energy such as wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.Environmental groups were scathing about the orders, pointing out that coal is in steep decline in the US compared with the increasingly cheap option of renewable energy. This year, 93% of the power added to the US grid will be from solar, wind and batteries, according to forecasts from Trump’s own administration.“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” said Kit Kennedy, managing director of power at the Natural Resources Defense Council.“Coal plants are old and dirty, uncompetitive and unreliable. The Trump administration is stuck in the past, trying to make utility customers pay more for yesterday’s energy. Instead, it should be doing all it can to build the electricity grid of the future.”Clean energy, such as solar and wind, is now so affordable that 99% of the existing US coal fleet costs more just to keep running than to retire a coal plant and replace it with renewables, a 2023 Energy Innovation report found. More

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      Clean energy spending boosts GOP districts. But lawmakers are keeping quiet as Trump targets incentives

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      Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.Republicans who now control Congress have to decide if they will eliminate the IRA’s grants and, more crucially, the tax credits that have spurred a boom in clean energy activity in their own districts. A total of 78% of this spending has gone to Republican-held suburban and rural districts across the US, according to data from Atlas Public Policy.Of the 20 congressional districts that have attracted the most clean energy manufacturing investment since the IRA passed in 2022, 18 are represented by Republicans, according to Atlas. The top three districts, in North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada, represented by Richard Hudson, Earl Carter and Mark Amodei, respectively, have collectively seen nearly $30bn in new investments since the legislation.Despite this, none of the 18 Republican representatives contacted by the Guardian would comment on whether they agree with Trump that clean energy incentives should be scrapped.“Members aren’t necessarily looking for opportunities to disagree with the White House at the moment,” said Heather Reams, the president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a center-right group that advocates in favor of clean energy.The Atlas data set is the newest in a series of reports showing the IRA benefitted Republican-led districts the most. And the largest individual pools of money from the bill also went to projects in red communities, according to a separate data set shared with the Guardian by an anonymous source at the Department of Energy (DoE).The top grant from the IRA, worth $500m, went to a General Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan – represented by Republican Tom Barrett – the DoE data shows. And though the biggest loan of $15bn went to California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company utility to expand clean power and modernize infrastructure, the second and third largest went to battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky, and Kokomo, Indiana, represented by conservatives Brett Guthrie and Victoria Spartz, respectively. Hageman, Guthrie and Spartz did not respond to requests for comment.Some Republicans have publicly lauded the tax credits’ impacts on their districts even as they have attacked the IRA. The ultraconservative Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance, praised the IRA-funded expansion of solar manufacturing in her district but called the bill itself “dangerous”, winning her scrutiny from Joe Biden in 2023. Her district saw more investment than all but 14 others, the Atlas data shows.In a sign of private nervousness among conservatives about a repeal of the tax credits, though, a group of 21 Republican lawmakers, including Carter and Amodei, signed a letter to colleagues warning that axing the IRA risks planned projects and would escalate energy bills. Some conservatives made similar calls during a January hearing in the House ways and means committee.But these voices have gotten quieter in recent weeks, with some Republicans who privately supported the letter refusing to sign it for strategic reasons, and some letter signatories saying the IRA tax credits should not necessarily be a major priority.Ongoing budget concerns have made it especially difficult for conservatives to defend the credits. Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 proposal authorized $4.5tn in tax cuts through 2034 and called on committees to partially offset the cost with $2tn in spending reductions. A full repeal of the IRA’s green energy tax credits would slash about $850bn in spending the Tax Foundation thinktank recently found.“They’re trying to kind of balance finding the money so that they’re not adding to the federal debt, while also trying to protect these beneficial and popular tax credits and provisions,” said Dana Nuccitelli, the research coordinator at the non-partisan advocacy group Citizens’ Climate Lobby. “It’s not easy.”Reams, of the Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions thinktank, said that as the realities of lost jobs and increasing energy costs become clear, Trump may change his mind about the need to repeal the credits. “There’s what Donald Trump says – remember, he hated EVs, but he just bought a Tesla – and what he does,” she said. “You’ve got to not take it all so literally and bide some time to get a sense of what really is going on.”Still, there are already signs that Trump’s hostile stance towards renewables – he has halted approvals of wind and solar projects on federal land and waters – – is starting to dampen clean energy activity in the US.Approximately $8bn in clean energy manufacturing activity has been canceled so far this year, Atlas has calculated, with a separate analysis by Climate Power finding that 50,000 jobs have been lost or are threatened.A full repeal of the IRA would hike energy bills for households and imperil a further 1.5m jobs in the US, according to yet another recent report, by Energy Innovation. “Many of those jobs will be at risk if the IRA is repealed,” Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford, warned recently about the company’s plans to expand its electric vehicle factories.“The Trump administration aims to restore US manufacturing jobs, but cutting existing federal energy incentives could really undermine that goal,” said Tom Taylor, a senior policy analyst at Atlas.It’s a message some climate advocates have been bringing to Republican lawmakers in recent weeks in an attempt to save the tax credits. Citizens’ Climate Lobby, for instance, this month lobbied 47 Republicans on Capitol Hill calling on them to protect the tax credits, and is now asking its members to call their Republican representatives, focusing not on their climate benefits but on their potential to spur economic growth.“Everybody loves manufacturing jobs,” Nuccitelli said.In their lobbying, Citizens Climate Lobby is also highlighting the low price of building clean power, the need for abundant energy amid forecasted spikes in energy from the artificial intelligence boom, and the fact that repealing the incentives could cause household electricity bills to increase by about 10% over the next decade.Despite the lack of public support for the tax credits from GOP lawmakers, the organization said they enjoy significant support on Capitol Hill, with some GOP lawmakers calling to protect them in private meetings and personal phone calls with other congressional colleagues.Only two Democratic-led districts were on the list provided by the Atlas Public Policy. One was Arizona’s Raúl Grijalva, who was a strong advocate for the IRA’s green incentives before he died this month.“The Inflation Reduction Act is a vital investment in the future stability of the planet,” his office wrote in a statement to the Guardian before his passing. “As a self-proclaimed business genius, Trump should easily be able to understand the high financial and humanitarian costs of increasing climate catastrophes.” More

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      A pardon that proves power trumps all | Brief letters

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      There are plenty of people in the US justice system who suffer miscarriages of justice, who cannot afford good lawyers and who receive unnecessarily harsh sentences. By pardoning his son (Report, 2 December), Joe Biden has sent a message to the American people – and the world – that people close to those in power can get a better deal. This undermines the entire justice system and is an utter disgrace.Angela WrightLondon In your article (Four of UK’s oldest nuclear plants to run for even longer as Hinkley Point delayed, 4 December), we are told by Ed Miliband that these extensions are “a major win for our energy independence”. No, Ed – they are a major win for EDF, a French company on whom, this article asserts, we are 100% dependent for our nuclear energy.Rosemary MiddletonMiddle Taphouse, Cornwall There is an internet meme that sums up Mary Ann Sieghart’s article (Why do some men behave badly? I think I have the answer, 6 December) in 10 words, advising women and girls to: “Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.” One of my younger feminist colleagues has even cross-stiched this great advice.Prof Rachel FysonUniversity of Nottingham You report (3 December) that the leader of Merthyr Tydfil county borough council says his team, officers at the council and external agencies will “move heaven and earth to ensure everything is put back into place” following the emergence of a sinkhole. Earth, yes, but is it really necessary to move heaven?Richard FosterThatcham, Berkshire If the government is allowing the British Museum freedom to decide on the fate of the Parthenon marbles (Report, 2 December) then the Greek authorities had better keep an eye on eBay.John Rushton Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire More

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      Trump picks oil and gas industry CEO Chris Wright as next energy secretary

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      Donald Trump said on Saturday that Chris Wright, an oil and gas industry executive and a staunch defender of fossil fuel use, would be his pick to lead the US Department of Energy.Wright is the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, an oilfield services firm based in Denver, Colorado. He is expected to support Trump’s plan to maximize production of oil and gas and to seek ways to boost generation of electricity, demand for which is rising for the first time in decades.He is also likely to share Trump’s opposition to global cooperation on fighting climate change. Wright has called climate change activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either,” Wright said in a video posted to his LinkedIn profile last year.Wright, who does not have any political experience, has written extensively on the need for more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty.He has stood out among oil and gas executives for his freewheeling style, and describes himself as a tech nerd.Wright made a media splash in 2019 when he drank fracking fluid on camera to demonstrate it was not dangerous.US oil output hit the highest level any country has ever produced under Biden, and it is uncertain how much Wright and the incoming administration could boost that.Most drilling decisions are driven by private companies working on land not owned by the federal government.The Department of Energy handles US energy diplomacy, administers the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – which Trump has said he wants to replenish – and runs grant and loan programs to advance energy technologies, such as the Loan Programs Office.The secretary also oversees the aging US nuclear weapons complex, nuclear energy waste disposal and 17 national labs.If confirmed by the Senate, Wright will replace Jennifer Granholm, a supporter of electric vehicles and emerging energy sources like geothermal power, and a backer of carbon-free wind, solar and nuclear energy.Wright will also likely be involved in the permitting of electricity transmission and the expansion of nuclear power, an energy source that is popular with both Republicans and Democrats but which is expensive and complicated to permit.Power demand in the United States is surging for the first time in two decades amid growth in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and cryptocurrencies.Trump also announced on Saturday that he had picked one of his personal attorneys, Will Scharf, to serve as his White House staff secretary. Scharf is a former federal prosecutor who was a member of Trump’s legal team in his successful attempt to get broad immunity from prosecution from the supreme court.Writing on Twitter the day after Trump’s election, Scharf greeted the news that Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted the former president for his attempt to subvert the 2020 election, was winding down the Trump case and planned to resign with the words, “Bye Jack.” More

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      Environmental groups alarmed as Doug Burgum picked for US interior secretary

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      Donald Trump’s nomination of North Dakota’s Republican governor, Doug Burgum, as the interior secretary has prompted swift backlash from environmental advocacy groups alarmed at the incoming administration’s plans to use federal lands for oil and gas drilling.Trump also announced in a statement on Friday his intention to make Burgum chair of a National Energy Council he intends to form to “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE” and to focus on “the battle for AI superiority”.Burgum, a former businessman, has been governor since 2016 of North Dakota, which is the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country. Burgum, if confirmed by the Senate, would manage US federal lands including national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as oversee relations with 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.Major concerns have loomed over the country’s wildlife refuges and public lands as Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term. Throughout his campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly said “drill, baby, drill” and has vowed to carve up the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska’s northern tundra for oil and gas drilling.The Sierra Club, the country’s largest non-profit environmental organization, said: “It was climate skeptic Doug Burgum who helped arrange the Mar-a-Lago meeting with wealthy oil and gas executives where Donald Trump offered to overturn dozens of environmental rules and regulations in exchange for $1bn in campaign contributions.”The April meeting at Trump’s club earlier this year prompted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the country’s top ethics watchdog, as well as House Democrats, to investigate the dinner over constitutional and campaign violations.“If that weren’t disqualifying enough, he’s long advocated for rolling back critical environmental safeguards in order to let polluters profit. Doug Burgum’s ties to the fossil fuel industry run deep and, if confirmed to this position, he will surely continue Donald Trump’s efforts to sell out our public lands to his polluter pals. Our lands are our nation’s greatest treasure, and the interior department is charged with their protection,” the Sierra Club continued.Similarly, the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation policy organization focused on land and energy issues across the western states, said: “Doug Burgum comes from an oil state, but North Dakota is not a public lands state. His cozy relationship with oil billionaires may endear him to Donald Trump, but he has no experience that qualifies him to oversee the management of 20% of America’s lands.”It went on to add: “If Doug Burgum tries to turn America’s public lands into an even bigger cash cow for the oil and gas industry, or tries to shrink America’s parks and national monuments, he’ll quickly discover he’s on the wrong side of history.”The Center for Biological Diversity equally condemned the nomination, saying that Burgum would be a “disastrous secretary of the interior who’ll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBurgum was not always aligned with Trump’s extreme climate agenda. He has said he believes that climate change is real and in 2021 had called for North Dakota to be carbon neutral by 2030, advocating for a plan that retained the state’s fossil fuel industries while investing in carbon capture and storage technologies to offset emissions.At the time, environmental groups supported Burgum’s pledge, but noted the impracticality of relying on unproven carbon capture technology rather than a transition away from fossil fuels.“Could be worse for sure,” said Jared Huffman, a progressive Democrat of California and senior member of the House natural resources committee who has championed climate action. “I look forward to trying to work productively with him.”Burgum’s views on matters outside of climate and energy, however, have long been reactionary. He signed a number of bills targeting LGBTQ+ people in North Dakota, including ones that banned gender-affirming care for minors, restricted drag shows, and banned trans people from using bathrooms and shower facilities that match their gender identity in prisons, domestic violence shelters or state university families. More