The American Bird Conservancy is suing the Department of the Interior over an agency regulation that allows wind energy companies to obtain 30-year permits to kill eagles. The group told Interior and the Fish and Wildlife Service that it was going to sue based on what it saw as violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, among other laws.
The current rule replaced an earlier regulation allowing energy companies to kill eagles for five years.
“Eagles are among our nation’s most iconic and cherished birds. They do not have to be sacrificed for the next 30 years for the sake of unconstrained wind energy,” said Michael Hutchins, a conservancy spokesman. “Giving wind companies a 30-year pass to kill bald and golden eagles without knowing how it might affect their populations is a reckless and irresponsible gamble that millions of Americans are unwilling to take.”
More: Wisconsin Gazette
Feds Open 344K Acres Off Jersey to Wind Power
The Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management last week announced that more than 344,000 acres of sea floor will be open to commercial wind power. Federal authorities propose to auction off the lots, about seven miles off Atlantic City, in two designated areas. A 60-day public comment period will end Sept. 19, after which the lease sale date will be set. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that the two areas could support up to 3.4 GW of wind energy.
More:North American Wind Power
East Coast Area Open To Seismic Testing
Federal regulators approved seismic testing in areas up to 400 miles offshore between Delaware and Florida, in a move hailed by oil and gas exploration proponents. The Department of the Interior announced the move, saying that it was time to update the 40-year-old seismic information on offshore oil and gas reserves. It said steps would be taken to protect marine life during the testing. Estimates based on earlier seismic studies point to 1.9 billion barrels of oil and 21.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Mid-Atlantic to South Atlantic coasts. Environmentalists are still concerned that seismic testing will disturb or kill marine life.
More: The Baltimore Sun
Louisiana LNG Plant Site Gets Next FERC OK
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has cleared the way for Sempra Energy to begin preliminary site clearance work for its proposed LNG facility near Lake Charles, La. The authorization allows preliminary work and equipment storage on the site. Sempra said construction on the $10 billion project is set for this fall. When completed, it will allow for the export of up to 12 million metric tons of LNG per year.
More: The Advocate
U.S. Electric Grid Fails More than Most Others
U.S. electric consumers experience more power interruptions than those in any other developed nation, according to a study by a University of Minnesota professor. Massoud Amin, director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the university, said data from the Department of Energy and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. show that the U.S. grid now loses power 285% more often than it did in 1984.
The interruptions cost businesses approximately $150 billion a year, he said. He said customers in Japan lose power for an average of four minutes per year while those in the American upper Midwest go dark for an average of 92 minutes. The analysis excluded interruptions caused by severe storms or fires.
More: International Business Times
New Energy Dev. Could Eat Up Area of Two Maines
Researchers for the environmental group North America Congress for Conservation Biology estimate that at its current rate, energy development in the U.S. could consume an area twice the size of the state of Maine by 2040.
They said new mines, oil and gas wells and solar and wind farms could consume 175,000 to 250,000 square kilometers, complicating efforts to preserve wildlife habitat. “There is going to be a very large challenge in siting all of this energy infrastructure,” said landscape ecologist Anne Trainor of Yale University.
More: Science Magazine
Energy Growth: 351 GW by 2040
The Department of Energy estimates that 351 GW of new generation will be constructed in the U.S. by 2040. That’s equivalent to 100 plants the size of NRG’s W.A. Parish plant near Houston. But while plants are still being built, the rate is slowing. DOE estimates that 16 GW of generation will be added per year through 2016, slowing to 9 GW per year through 2022, then rising again to 14 GW annually through 2040. Future plants will be 73% natural gas, 24% renewable and 3% nuclear, DOE projects.
More: Houston Chronicle
McCarthy: New Rules are Guides to Energy Investing
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy told a group of state regulators that they should see the EPA’s recently announced emissions rules as a guide to energy investment, rather than a set of pollution control rules. “We really wanted this to be an opportunity to look at a short- and long-term investment strategy, not a pollution control strategy,” she told a meeting of the National Associate of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in Dallas. Emissions “can be reduced in the electricity sector in ways that are very far from pollution-control technologies.”
More: E&E Publishing