Tag: natural gas
Green Energy’s Future Rests on Red State Buy-In
The battle over the nation’s energy future has become another front in the escalating cultural and political confrontation between what America has been and what it is becoming.
The states that are most deeply integrated into the existing fossil-fuel economy, either as producers or as consumers, tend also to be the places that are most resistant to, and separated from, the major demographic, cultural, and economic changes remaking 21st-century American life.
These fossil-fuel-reliant states are nearly all among those moving
How Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Upended Germany
This article is a collaboration between The New Yorker and ProPublica.
Last October, I sat in the office of Klaus Emmerich—the chief union representative at the Garzweiler brown-coal mine, in western Germany—as he shared his misgivings about the country’s celebrated plan to stop burning coal. Germany’s buildup of renewable energy was lagging, and, given that coal accounts for more than a quarter of its total electricity supply, that meant it would have to rely on another energy source for the
Globalism Is Good Actually – The Atlantic
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced a ban on importing Russian oil and natural gas into the United States, arguing that the new economic sanction would strike a “powerful blow to Putin’s war machine.” He
Why America Hasn’t Achieved ‘Energy Independence’
In December, in a ballet of global logistics, more than 30 tankers ferrying liquid natural gas from the United States to various destinations around the globe—Japan, Brazil, South Africa—canceled their trips and set a new course for the European Union. On the days they pulled into port, the U.S. supplied more natural gas to Europe than Russia did.
This represented more than a minor milestone in global energy history. As recently as the mid-2000s, energy companies fretted that the U.S.
Inside Olaf Scholz’s historic shift on defense, Ukraine and Russia – POLITICO
BERLIN — At 1:49 p.m. on Saturday, February 26, Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, finally got the message he’d been hoping to receive for more than seven years.
“We’re changing course,” the text from a senior German politician began. “All arms deliveries to commence. Very late. I hope not too late. Finally.”
Sitting at his cluttered desk in central Berlin, Melnyk, whose vociferous advocacy for Ukraine had made him a diplomatic pariah in the German capital, couldn’t believe his
Why Europe Can’t Shut Off Russian Gas
No fossil fuel is more important to understanding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than natural gas. Russia sells gas to Europe via pipelines; Europe relies on it to heat its buildings, power its industry, and generate electricity. This interdependent relationship has gone on for decades, and although it may soon come to a close, it has limited the West from imposing harsher sanctions on Russia than it might have otherwise: The sanctions were “specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue,”
What the Supreme Court’s Vaccine-Mandate Case Is Really About
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a pair of cases challenging President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates in two contexts: private workplaces with more than 100 employees and health-care facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid.
Ostensibly, these cases are before the Court to resolve whether a president can even temporarily require vaccine and testing protocols during a pandemic to protect public health. But the questions the Court may examine are much more sweeping, with enormous implications for
How Bad Are Plastics for the Environment, Really?
This is hardly the time to talk about plastics is what I think when Dad, hovering over the waste bin at a post-funeral potluck, waves me over, his gesture discrete but emphatic. He has retrieved from the trash a crystalline plastic cup, with fluted, rigid sides. “Polystyrene,” he grins, inverting the cup to reveal its resin code (a 6 stamped inside the recycling symbol). “But not my kind.”
Dad, back in the 1960s, had manufactured a more resilient
Why the Energy Transition Will Be So Complicated
To appreciate the complexities of the competing demands between climate action and the continued need for energy, consider the story of an award—one that the recipient very much did not want and, indeed, did not bother to pick up.
It began when Innovex Downhole Solutions, a Texas-based company that provides technical services to the oil and gas industry, ordered 400 jackets from North Face with its corporate logo. But the iconic outdoor-clothing company refused to fulfill the order. North Face