E2-Wire

A report claims the upcoming rules could compromise electric grid reliability by forcing the closure of many power plants.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes emphasized Tuesday that the 
department has much more work to do.

Former President Jimmy Carter is attacking links between the Tea Party and wealthy backers whom he alleges are bent on helping the oil industry avoid paying its share of taxes.

“The Tea Party movement has been ... almost completely financed by hard-right oligarchs who want to prevent the oil companies and major corporations from having to pay their share of taxes or to comply with environmental laws,” Carter said Monday on the MSNBC show "Hardball."

Carter didn’t name names. But liberal groups often highlight ties between the Tea Party movement and groups including Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by billionaire David Koch of the energy company Koch Industries.

Poll finds Tea Party, independents split on climate



Tea Party skepticism about global warming won’t help bring independent voters into the movement, a poll slated for release Tuesday shows.



The Civil Society Institute — a think tank that pushes low-carbon power and conservation — is unveiling a survey that probes whether Tea Partiers and independents are “of the same mind when it comes to climate and clean energy issues.”



A sneak peak at a summary shows that “Independents are significantly more likely than Tea Party supporters to see global warming as a problem in need of a solution.”



But the divisions apparently aren’t insurmountable. 

“The partisan divide is far less evident when the discussion turns to reaping specific benefits and avoiding harms. For example, little disagreement is found among Tea Party supporters/ Independents — or Republicans and Democrats, for that matter — when the focus shifts to protecting water as being more important than developing new energy sources,” according to the summary of polling conducted for the nonprofit group by Opinion Research Corp.

Sink bashes Obama Gulf response, offshore drilling

Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink went after the Obama administration Monday for its handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, while attacking the idea of drilling near the state’s coastline.

“They just didn’t get on top of the oil spill,” Sink said of the administration, in her last debate with Republican opponent Rick Scott before Election Day. The two are essentially in a dead heat with less than a week to go.

Sink said the “first and most important thing that we learned as Floridians” from the BP spill is that oil-and-gas drilling in state waters “would be a horrible idea.”

“We learned that accidents can happen and an accident like that, close in to our shores, would totally destroy our tourist economy,” she added.

Scott: Sink, Crist didn’t promote Fla. beaches during spill

Scott said that Sink — the state’s chief financial officer — and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist did not do enough to reassure tourists that Florida beaches were not soaked with oil.

“The beaches were basically open,” said Scott, a former healthcare industry executive. “We should have been down there when we had all that possibility of being on national TV to say 'look the oil spill’s not here,' ” he said. “Part of the reason why we hurt our tourism is the fact that we played the game 'oh poor me, there’s problems down here' when the truth is our beaches were pretty much spotless.”

Researchers have some potentially troubling news for the nascent space-tourism industry — and for the planet.

A new study finds that soot emitted from suborbital rockets — the kind the Virgin Group hopes to fly commercially in space soon — could prompt important climatic changes.

The paper, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, explores the potential effects of high-altitude emissions from the 1,000 flights that could eventually occur every year.

Robert Dudley said he has "an enormous amount of work," but Rep. Edward Markey said "the American people deserve answers."

Trucking-industry groups are giving favorable initial reaction to the Obama administration’s first-time proposed greenhouse gas and fuel efficiency requirements for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles amid merely lukewarm support from environmental groups.
 
While industry groups are still reviewing the proposed performance standards unveiled Monday from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), they match up well with industry preferences for national fuel efficiency requirements — instead of federal mandates — that trucks run on alternatives to diesel fuel.
 
The American Trucking Associations last week adopted a new policy stating that “carbon emission reduction achieved through national truck fuel economy standards are preferable to government actions that increase fuel prices in an effort to discourage petroleum-based diesel fuel consumption or mandate the use of alternative fuels.”
 
“Better fuel efficiency is a key customer demand in the commercial vehicle sector, and our members continuously work to introduce better and more efficient technologies and systems into the marketplace,” Engine Manufacturers Association President Jed Mandel said in a statement Monday. “Because improved efficiency also results in lower greenhouse gas emissions, engine and truck manufacturers’ efforts to improve fuel efficiency for our customers align well with the overall goals of the regulation proposed today.”

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson hailed the first-ever emissions limits for medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses.

An oil-industry-backed ballot initiative to kill California’s global warming law is unlikely to pass, new polling shows.

A Los Angeles Times/USC poll released Monday finds that 48 percent of likely voters are against Proposition 23, compared to 32 percent in favor.

The poll taken Oct. 13-20 surveyed 922 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.2 percent, according to the Times.

BP CEO Bob Dudley said he thinks the press did a lousy job covering the company’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dudley — who took over this month as chief executive — told the Confederation of British Industry on Monday that there was a media rush to judgment about the spill’s effects, according to several accounts of his speech.

“We live in an atmosphere where many things are often exaggerated, opinion can quickly becomes polarized and it is tempting to react to events in extreme ways,” he said in a speech to the business group, the Guardian reports.