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Imminent Alaska Oil Drilling Halted

Great & Important News: a federal court just prevented oil and gas drilling operations from moving ahead in millions of acres spanning Alaska’s Chukchi Sea — one of our nation’s two "Polar Bear Seas." The ruling is a huge victory – it will forestall a potential disaster that would make the Gulf look like child’s play and will immediately protect sensitive Arctic habitat for endangered polar bears, walruses and bowhead whales, already besieged by melting ice from climate change. One of the last things the Bush Administration did in its final days was initiate a massive fire sale of drilling rights in the Chukchi Sea. Very unfortunately, the Obama Administration has adopted this reckless "drill everywhere" policy, including the Arctic, where BP is a main player. In a successful federal lawsuit, NRDC, Earthjustice, Alaska Native groups and others charged the government failed to analyze the potential impact on the Arctic from an oil spill and in handing out the permits, broke US environmental law. The judge ordered the drilling rights be revoked until a science-based environmental analysis is conducted. The fight continues to stop Shell from drilling off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the Beaufort Sea […]

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Weekly Clean Energy Roundup: July 29, 2010

DOE’s New Energy Hub to Develop Fuels from Sunlight DOE: $30M for Energy-Efficient Housing Partnerships DOE, DOD Announce Clean Energy Agreement Maine, Nova Scotia Signs Ocean Energy Agreement Unmanned Solar Aircraft Soars 14 Days International Renewable Energy Agency Gets Global Status DOE announced on July 22 the creation of the "Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub" to develop revolutionary methods of generating fuels directly from sunlight. The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), led by the California Institute of Technology in partnership with the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, will operate the initiative. JCAP will bring together leading researchers in an effort to simulate natural photosynthesis for practical energy production. The goal is to build an integrated solar energy-to-chemical fuel conversion system. The hub will receive up to $22 million in Fiscal Year 2010, then an estimated $25 million a year for the next four fiscal years. Research will be directed at finding the functional components needed to assemble a complete artificial photosynthetic system, including light absorbers, catalysts, molecular linkers, and separation membranes. The hub will then integrate those components into an operational solar fuel system and will develop scale-up strategies to move the product from the lab to commercial […]

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