Fwd: Brace yourselves
JBL
From: Bob Donnan <donnanl...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:37 AM
Subject: Brace yourselves
To:
'Exceptionally Dangerous': Trump EPA Targets Endangerment Finding That Enables Climate Rules
If the administration succeeds in repealing the legal finding, the EPA would lack authority under the Clean Air Act to impose standards for greenhouse gas emissions—meaning the move would kill vehicle regulations. As with the reporting last week, the formal announcement was sharply condemned by climate and health advocates and experts.
"Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and are the root cause of the climate crisis," said Deanna Noël with Public Citizen's Climate Program, ripping the administration's effort as "grossly misguided and exceptionally dangerous."
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The EU’s new methane rules threaten U.S. LNG exports. But industry insiders and lobbyists are pressuring the EU to look the other way.
Traditional diesel-powered fracking (top photo) and electric fracking (bottom photo). While industry may spin this as environmentally better gas to clients in Europe, how much of a difference actually exists? They are still mining frac sand in Wisconsin, still ruining huge quantities of water in our tristate area, still creating a legacy waste problem with radioactivity in landfills and waterways, still registering weekly DEP violations, still leveling trees and cutting pipelines to every well pad, and still polluting the air with thousands of diesel truck trips to each well pad.
“It’s very clear that the industry and the State Department are putting a lot of pressure on the EU to just give us a pass on this methane rule and commit to our dirty LNG,” said Lorne Stockman, research co-director for Oil Change International and co-author of a new report detailing climate impacts from five U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects.
Europeans will buy $750B in US energy
The EU boss characterized negotiations with the US president as “very difficult” and acknowledged the visible tension between the two before they reached the agreement.
Rep. Michael Rulli (R-Ohio) hailed the preliminary trade deal as a “boost to the Ohio Valley economy. With $750 billion in U.S. energy exports heading to Europe by 2028, our region stands to benefit directly from the new demand for American oil, natural gas, and coal.”
Trump’s $750 Billion Deal for U.S. Energy Collides With Market Reality
EU has pledged to increase purchases of American oil, natural gas and nuclear fuels, but exporters might struggle to meet demand
The European Union has promised President Trump a $750 billion shopping spree on American energy. Making good on that pledge will be a tall order.
Cue the frac fleets!
Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis
The heat that hit Svalbard in February was so intense that scientists could dig into the ground with spoons, "like it was soft ice cream."
The Arctic island of Svalbard is so reliably frigid that humanity bet its future on the place. Since 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — set deep in frozen soil known as permafrost — has accepted nearly 1.4 million samples of more than 6,000 species of critical crops. But, the island is warming six to seven times faster than the rest of the planet, making even winters freakishly hot, at least by Arctic standards. Indeed, in 2017, an access tunnel to the vault flooded as permafrost melted, though the seeds weren’t impacted.
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Why your energy bill is suddenly so much more expensive
And why it’s not getting cheaper any time soon.
According to PowerLines, a nonprofit working to reduce electricity prices, about 80 million Americans have to sacrifice other basic expenses like food or medicine to afford to keep the lights on. And it’s about to get even worse: Utilities in markets across the country have asked regulators for almost $29 billion in electricity rate increases for consumers for the first half of the year.
Why are prices rising so much all of a sudden? Right now, there are the usual factors driving the rise in electricity rates: high demand, not enough supply, and inflation. But there are problems that have been building up for decades as well, and now the bills are due.
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Rooftop Solar Is a Miracle. Why Are We Killing It With Red Tape?
Trump wants to end solar power—and too many blue states are helping.
Bill McKibben | September+October 2025 Issue
A million and a half Germans have installed “balcony solar”—they simply went to the big-box store, bought a giant panel for a few hundred euros, hung it from their apartment railing, and produced up to a quarter of their household’s power needs. Other European countries have followed suit. Ditto Australia, where Saul Griffith, author of the new book Plug In!, notes that permits can be had in a single day using a smartphone app—“the tradie [contractor] often does this for you. In Australia, it takes two or three days once you’ve made the decision to do it to get the system up and running.”
But not in America, where President Donald Trump and his Republican allies are pulling out all the stops to destroy renewable power. They’ve shut down big offshore wind projects, they’re limiting projects on public lands, and the “Big Beautiful Bill” not only rolled back tax credits for large-scale renewable projects, it took direct aim at precisely the kind of rooftop solar work that thousands of small contractors like EmPower produce.
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The country’s biggest energy market struggles to reform amid soaring costs
Mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM is under intense political pressure to solve its interconnection backlog and other problems. But experts warn there are no easy fixes.
The country’s biggest power market is caught in a trap of its own making — and the more than 65 million people from the mid-Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes who rely on it for electricity will pay the price.
Last week, PJM Interconnection announced a new record in its annual capacity auction, the means by which the grid operator secures the resources it needs to maintain a reliable transmission grid across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Prices increased to $16.1 billion, up from last year’s already record-setting $14.7 billion and an eightfold increase compared to $2.2 billion for the 2023 auction.
Prices would have spiked even further if not for a cap instituted as part of a settlement agreement with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) reached in April.
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Community solar is the honey badger of clean energy
One of the primary perks of distributed generation projects is staying out of transmission-level queues, which can delay project timelines tremendously. Community solar projects, on the other hand, use existing infrastructure to connect to the grid, making them much more nimble.
“Larger transmission-level queues have very lengthy interconnection processes and are generally crowded across the country, whereas community solar projects follow distribution-level interconnection processes, which are much quicker,” detailed Aaron Halimi, founder and president of Renewable Properties (RP). “In this business, time is money.”
PJM, for example, oversees the largest power grid operator in the United States, and it hasn’t accepted new requests to interconnect since 2022, when the regional transmission organization (RTO) paused its queue to evaluate reforms aimed at accommodating massive spikes in study submissions.
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Potential Impact of Federal Workforce Layoffs on Ohio River Valley States
The most reliable data shows that there were approximately 191,500 federal employees (excluding about 62,000 US Postal Service workers) in the four-state Ohio River Valley region in December 2024. These federal employees make up several percent of each states’ workforce, ranging from 3.3% of total jobs in West Virginia to 1.1% in Ohio. Within each state, some county economies rely heavily on federal employment at military bases, Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, and federal prisons. If federal workforce cuts in Ohio River Valley states are proportionate to the 14% reduction nationwide, this would result in the loss of over 27,000 direct federal jobs in the region.
Renaming the Kennedy Center for Donald and Melania Trump would violate the law that created it
The Kennedy Center can’t include new memorials or plaques — for donors or presidents — under U.S. law.
Republicans last week passed an amendment through committee that would rename the opera house after Melania Trump, saying it was a way to recognize her support for and commitment to the arts. The measure, sponsored by GOP Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, is now part of key legislation to fund the Interior Department, but it would still need to pass through the full House and the Senate to become law.
The next day, Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., introduced the “Make Entertainment Great Again Act” to rename the whole center the “Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts.” The House has not yet taken any action on it.
Eco Wave Power Hits Major U.S. Milestone as Floaters Installed
Eco Wave Power has successfully completed of the installation of floaters for its first U.S. wave energy project at the Port of Los Angeles. The company is now moving full speed ahead toward the official unveiling on Sept. 9, 2025, as planned. The floaters were fabricated by All-Ways Metal, a California-based, woman-owned company, and installed by C&S Welding Inc., a Wilmington-based marine and industrial contractor known for its exemplary safety record and coastal infrastructure expertise.
The project utilizes floaters mounted on existing marine structures, converting wave motion into clean electricity through a land-based conversion unit. The technology is modular, low-maintenance, and designed for minimal environmental impact-making it ideal for scalable deployments along coastlines and in port environments.
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A pioneering ‘second-life’ battery startup begins major Texas expansion
Armed with lessons from five years of hooking up used EV batteries to the grid in California, B2U is making a 100-MWh foray into Texas’ volatile energy market.
Five years ago, B2U Storage Solutions proved that old EV batteries could hook up to the grid to store clean energy, safely and cheaply. Now the company is taking the concept to Texas.
B2U just broke ground on a second-life grid battery project in Bexar County, near San Antonio, the company told Canary Media. In the next 12 months, B2U will complete four projects in the region, totalling 100 megawatt-hours of storage, CEO Freeman Hall said. The move marks a major expansion for the scrappy innovator, at a time of increased interest in the value of used EV batteries.
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Using Sudoku to improve power yield in PV systems under partial shading
Indian researchers have developed a Sudoku-based technique to reduce power losses in PV systems operating under partial shading. They claim the method increases energy efficiency and revenue generation more than conventional reconfiguration techniques.
Researchers at Puducherry Technological University in India have developed a new method to improve power yield in PV arrays operating under partial shading.
Using a Sudoku-like technique, the PV system is arranged in a nine by nine solar module configuration to boost maximum harvested power under various shading patterns. The layout aims to produce nearly equal currents across each row. The pattern follows the logic of a number-based Sudoku puzzle to structure the array.
The Four Pyramid Sudoku (FPS) method is designed to evenly distribute shading across the PV array while maintaining electrical connections that deliver balanced and maximum current in each row.
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PV installers must act as US solar tax credit phase-out looms
Aurora Solar says most US homeowners are unaware of the urgency created by the One Big Beautiful Bill’s (OBBB) phase-out of the 30% solar tax credit, underscoring the need for installers to educate consumers, cut soft costs, and prioritize transparency.
Among the many changes in the OBBB is the early phase-out of the 30% US Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which ends for residential solar at the end of 2025. The rise in energy costs as a result of the bill has many experts concerned.
Aurora Solar, a solar installer workflow management software provider, surveyed 1,000 people for their reactions to the bill. The main takeaway, Aurora said, is that while 55% of Americans say the expiring solar incentives make them more likely to install solar, just one in four actually understand the urgency created by the new law. According to a statement from Aurora, this gives solar companies have a critical window of time in which to educate consumers about rising energy costs, the benefits of solar energy and the timeline for receiving tax credits.
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Want To Buy a Used Electric Car Before US Tax Credit Expires? 7 Things To Know
There are just two months and two days left to get a used electric car in the United States and get a $4,000 tax credit off the price. However, not everyone is eligible for the tax credit, not every used electric car qualifies, and there are some things to know going into the process.
The IRS has a page with all of these details, and I recommend looking closely through that page if you are planning to buy a used electric car before the tax credit is gone on October 1.
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PA issues criminal charges against Equitrans for massive 2022 gas leak
In addition to polluting the air, the leak led to water contamination
The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office announced criminal charges against Equitrans LP, the Canonsburg-based gas storage company responsible for one of the largest methane leaks in recent U.S. history at a Western Pennsylvania facility. The Rager Mountain storage field is one of 48 gas storage facilities in Pennsylvania, according to the DEP. It can store up to 9 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Gas is pumped underground into old, depleted gas wells drilled decades ago; it is withdrawn when utilities need gas.
The 2022 gas leak at Rager Mountain gas storage field in Jackson Township, Cambria County, released approximately one billion cubic feet of natural gas over a two-week period. The resultant plume travelled across Southern Pennsylvania, “as well as portions of Maryland, Delaware, and over the Atlantic Ocean,” according to a release by Attorney General Dave Sunday announcing the charges.
Nearby residents described hearing a “jet engine”-like sound coming from the storage field, smelling a natural gas odor, and experiencing headaches around the time of the leak. The company, which was acquired by EQT in 2024 and renamed Equitrans Midstream, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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The ICE Age Ends: How Electric Cars Are Shutting Down Gas Stations & Garages
Owning a gasoline-powered car has long meant convenience, and relatively cheap convenience at that. Affordable fuel around every corner, quick oil changes, and easy repairs. As electric vehicle adoption accelerates past critical mass, this convenience will rapidly unravel. Gas stations will close, oil-change shops will disappear, and basic maintenance costs will climb sharply. Welcome to the new reality of internal combustion, where keeping your car on the road grows harder and more expensive by the day.
Geoffrey Moore introduced the term crossing the chasm to describe how technologies must move from early adopters, who are comfortable taking risks, to the early majority, who value practicality, convenience, and affordability. Successfully crossing this chasm matters because it represents the point at which a new technology becomes viable for most consumers. It is also when adoption accelerates dramatically and begins reshaping markets, economies, and infrastructures.
We have seen this dynamic before with other technologies. Around 2010 to 2012, smartphones crossed the chasm, moving from specialized devices used by a small group to widespread adoption by the general population. Similarly, streaming video services transitioned rapidly after 2012 from niche alternatives to dominant forms of home entertainment, quickly replacing physical DVDs. Digital cameras passed the same tipping point in the mid-2000s, overtaking film photography and causing the decline of film-related businesses such as Kodak. Each of these examples demonstrates how quickly industries can be transformed once critical adoption levels are reached.
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