Tag: EPA regulations

Black Hills Power, a South Dakota utility with offices in Denver, filed papers Tuesday to shut down three aging coal-fired power plants in Wyoming and build a new natural gas-powered plant in Cheyenne – the first of its kind in the coal-dominated state.

Harmful, smog-causing emissions from the natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, should be curtailed as swiftly as possible by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), conservation groups argued at an EPA meeting in Denver on Wednesday.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today released a report requested by President Barack Obama showing that two-thirds of all offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and half of all onshore leases on federal lands are not currently being used by the energy companies that purchased the leases.

Despite the Gulf oil spill, a massive pipeline break in Michigan and broad concerns about global warming, ambitious climate-change and energy legislation is likely dead for the year. That poses a conundrum, going forward, for environmentalists: How to convince lawmakers of the need for legislation to sever the country’s decades-long ties to oil and to reform energy policy more generally?