Energy & Industry

Last summer, it seemed Colorado might take decades to descend from the staggering height of its natural gas boom. High-paying jobs out on the drill rigs were drawing everyone from heavy equipment operators to senior center chefs to unskilled laborers who might otherwise work in a grocery checkout line or the local 7-11. As a […]

Move over, gas wells. Here comes the latest NIMBY issue: the construction of new transmission lines, an Obama administration priority as the new president seeks to stimulate the economy and rebuild U.S. infrastructure. A proposal from Idaho Power Co., touted as a regional and national priority, is causing quite a stir in rural Oregon’s Baker […]

It’s amazing how quickly things can change. In the last week, we’ve watched Barack Obama take his (slightly bungled) presidential oath of office and George W. Bush helicopter back to Crawford, Tex. In the last month, we High Country News-ers were busy reporting on all the speedy and sweeping changes that Bush made on his […]

On Jan. 16, outgoing Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne authorized the Bureau of Land Management to create renewable energy offices in Wyoming, Arizona, California and Nevada. The offices are meant to speed permitting for wind, solar, biomass and geothermal projects, as well as transmission lines. The feds are acting on a 2005 directive to develop 10,000 […]

President-elect Barack Obama says he favors nuclear energy, and yesterday his Energy secretary nominee Steven Chu said he intends to fast-track the construction of new domestic nuclear plants. At the same time, Obama is against the proposed high-level nuclear storage facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. With just days remaining before Obama takes office, Western politicians […]

Setbacks are an ongoing theme for NGOs and renewable energy companies that are promoting the use of sustainable resources. Now wind farms are hearing about another setback – a physical one, that is, and for justifiable reasons. The funny thing is, they’re hearing it from other renewable energy advocates. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports […]

I’m old enough to remember the great civil rights struggles of the 1960s, as well as the organizations that led them, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality. They accomplished much, and even though our next American president will be an African-American, there is doubtless […]

Energy companies will be able to drill 18,000 new natural gas wells on 1.5 million federal acres in southeastern Montana’s remote Powder River Basin over the next 20 years, thanks an amendment to the area’s Resource Management Plan released by the Bureau of Land Management in the waning days of the Bush administration. The basin, […]

Check out this scorching Mother Jones blog post from HCN freelancer Keith Kloor. Keith talked to a senior BLM official about the Bush administration’s energy free-for-all in Utah: Also see Keith’s HCN stories about more Utah shenanigans from the BLM, Dust on the Rocks and (Un)clearing the Air. And these other articles: Trashing the earth, […]

When the Bureau of Land Management announced last month that hundreds of thousands of acres of Utah’s redrock country would be up for oil and gas leasing, the agency made something of an end-run around public process. It announced the sale on Nov. 4, when everyone was distracted by the presidential election, and it failed […]

Back in 1998, the group Earth Liberation Front (a.k.a. ELF) set a series of fires at Vail ski resort in Colorado and caused $12 million in damage. Authorities at the time called it the most expensive “ecoterrorism” to date. Burning stuff down is not an activity I personally condone (unless we’re talking about Burning Man), […]

Does anyone else feel like this whole economic crash has somehow tweaked our very perception of time? Just a few months ago, High Country News was writing stories about the unprecedented pace and size of the natural gas boom. In order to provide historical context, the stories often mentioned Black Sunday, the dark day in […]

Heating with wood provides a paradox. The process provides a warm indoor fire, isolating you from the cold outdoors. And yet it makes you more connected to the outdoors. Let it be noted that I use wood for supplemental heat, more or less. Our century-old house has a gas furnace, and while I’m glad it’s […]

HCN has been writing a lot lately about how the new mining boom is already going bust. Today, it got worse: global mining giant Rio Tinto announced it is laying off 14,000 employees, sending a clear message that the mining surge that was booming just a year ago has gone belly up. It’s the biggest […]