Drive south from Price, Utah for about an hour until Route 6 intersects with I-70. On your right, toward the west, the stunning San Rafael Reef rises. And on the left, the eastern Book Cliffs rise. And, just there, to the east of Route 6, if the energy development company, Blue Castle Holdings, and Utah […]
Energy & Industry
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Front Range drilldown
In the fight over oil and gas regulation, local control gains ground.
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Idaho Power is waging war on renewable energy. Is it winning?
One of the West’s great old-school monopolies and its multi-pronged attack on wind and solar.
Posted inGoat
New oil and gas leases throw another wrench in Utah’s big wilderness deal
The San Rafael Swell, the Book Cliffs, Desolation Canyon and the areas around Canyonlands National Park are some of Utah’s most iconic places; yet they lack federal protections. They’ve been land management battlegrounds for decades, pitting wilderness advocates and muscle-powered recreationalists against resource extraction and motor–powered recreationalists. But as reporter Greg Hanscom described recently in […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A war for a dollar
An energy war is sizzling in Arizona, with utilities pitted against the solar industry, environmentalists and even some free-market Republicans. The fight basically boils down to dollars: How much can an Arizonan with a solar system save on his electricity bill, and what will those savings cost other ratepayers? The savings are currently sizable, thanks […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Moving on up in the oil patch
Are the West’s energy fields the last bastion of the American Dream?
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
The Latest: Mt. Taylor uranium mines still haunt Navajo communities
BackstoryThe controversy surrounding Mount Taylor — a volcano in northwest New Mexico sacred to several tribes — began in 2008, when the tribes sought to protect it from further uranium mining (“Dueling Claims,” HCN, 12/7/09). After contamination from the mines sickened workers, they fought to have 400,000 acres of federal, state and private lands designated […]
Posted inGoat
Energy update: renewables, coal and gas by the numbers
About a year ago, many of us in energy news land were busy scribbling out coal’s eulogy. Natural gas and renewable energy were slowly taking over the electricity fuel mix, putting coal — our favorite cheap electricity generator for generations — against the rope. It was only a matter of time before natural gas, its […]
Posted inGoat
New tech to trace fracking fluid could mean more accountability
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes under fire for abandoning studies that linked contaminated water to hydraulic fracturing, and oil and gas companies consider how to fix their public image around the issue, states are trying to figure out how much transparency to demand from the industry. Meanwhile, researchers are racing to find the […]
Posted inGoat
Deregulation talk shakes up Arizona energy scene
The Arizona energy fight that everyone’s been yapping about lately is the effort by the state’s largest investor-owned utility, Arizona Public Service, to tweak state regulations regarding how the utility compensates homeowners for energy they produce from rooftop solar panels. That show – over the decidedly un-sexy-sounding issue of net metering – has a wacky […]
Posted inGoat
Is big desert solar killing birds in Southern California?
The threat large-scale solar developments pose to tortoise in the desert Southwest has been well established, but what about the technology’s effect on birds? The question has been asked before — David Danelski of the Riverside Press Enterprise reported on it in Feburary of 2012 — but it emerged most dramatically last winter during the […]
Posted inGoat
Kuwait’s ‘solar leaders’ study renewable energy in Colorado
It reached 115 degrees on Monday, in Kuwait City, Kuwait, which is typical for the desert city whose summer highs regularly peak well above 120. In the relatively cool 90 degrees of Colorado’s Western Slope on the same day, 15 Kuwaitis wearing neon-yellow vests embroidered with “solar leaders” on the backs, gathered around photovoltaic demonstrations […]
Posted inGoat
Can the oil and gas industry fix its public image in Colorado?
Last week, I drove over the mountains from High Country News HQ in Paonia, Colo., to Denver to attend the Rocky Mountain Energy Summit, an annual confab for the oil and gas industry – complete with a balloon drop wherein suited attendees throw elbows as they jockey for prizes — hosted by its powerful state […]
Posted inGoat
Climate change is already pummeling energy infrastructure
A massive cold front settled over the American Southwest in the early days of February 2011. The mercury in Albuquerque hit seven below zero; snow birds in Tucson shivered in sub 20-degree temps; and Nogales, on the border with Mexico, reached a frigid 11 degrees. While such temperatures may seem balmy to northerners, they wreaked […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
The Latest: Mining claims halted in some areas
BackstoryBy mid-2011, more than 650 mining claims had been staked on the sites of proposed solar and wind projects on public land in the West — deliberate attempts, some say, to delay or halt renewable energy development (“BLM shields renewable projects from mining speculation,” HCN, 5/30/11). Mining claims trump surface rights, and if salable minerals […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
Sandy Gebhards and Sierra Crane-Murdoch on life in the oilfields
For many workers left jobless or underemployed after the economic recession of 2008, the domestic oil and gas boom now sweeping the U.S. seems like a quick ticket to high paying work. For the latest edition of Sounds of the High Country, KDNK’s ongoing collaboration with High Country News, KDNK’s Nelson Harvey spoke with Sandy […]
Posted inWotr
Some states recognize that corn ethanol is a bum deal
As ethanol content in gasoline continues to rise, some communities are resisting.
Posted inGoat
Fracking passions run hot — and science gets burned
With the possible exception of England’s Royal Baby, few topics are as hot right now as fracking. No matter what news or quasi-news source you turn to, there it is: Impossible to ignore, nearly as impossible to understand. It’s no surprise that people are passionate about the subject. As Judith Lewis Mernit writes forHCN, natural […]
Posted inGoat
Renewable energy transmission projects create tension among greens
In mid June, I received two very different press releases from two environmental groups announcing the same event: The Bureau of Land Management’s release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed SunZia high voltage transmission line that would stretch from central New Mexico to the fringes of Phoenix, Ariz. The document is the […]
Posted inGoat
New data shows government oversight of oil and gas spills is spotty at best
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently walked back its massive investigation of water contamination from natural gas drilling in Pavillion, Wyoming, John Hanger, a Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania and the former secretary of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, wrote on his blog: “The EPA has just put a ‘kick me’ sign on […]