Business & Finance Archives - Inside Climate News

As Financial Turmoil Threatens Plans for an Alabama Wood Pellet Plant, Advocates Question Its Climate and Community Benefits

By Lee Hedgepeth — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Enviva made big promises to the small Alabama town that would produce the fuel for “sustainable” energy in Europe. The company’s struggles have left politicians who supported it mum and activists who opposed it hopeful.

By Lee Hedgepeth

EPES, Ala.—Portia Shepherd said “it’s a God thing.”

Will the American Geophysical Union Cut All Ties With the Fossil Fuel Industry?

By Liza Gross — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Scientist-activists ask the world’s biggest society of earth and space scientists to revoke the fossil fuel industry’s social license.

By Liza Gross

SAN FRANCISCO—Scientists who have risked their careers, freedom and livelihoods led a town hall meeting here on Tuesday at the world’s largest annual gathering of earth and space scientists to ask their colleagues to consider what their professional society’s stance should be in relation to the fossil fuel industry.

Texas Court Strikes Down Air Pollution Permit for Gulf Coast Oil Terminal

By Dylan Baddour — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 18:30:00 +0000

A judge reversed a 2022 decision by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that involved its controversial “one-mile rule” to deny hearing requests.

By Dylan Baddour

For the second time in three weeks, a court struck down an air pollution permit issued by Texas’ environmental regulator.

A New Law Regulating the Cosmetics Industry Expands the FDA’s Power But Fails to Ban Toxic Chemicals in Beauty Products

By Victoria St. Martin — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act empowers the FDA to recall harmful cosmetics. Advocates want to know why manufacturers still don’t have to prove their products are safe before they’re sold to millions of consumers.

By Victoria St. Martin

Dereliction of Beauty: Second in a series on how lax regulation of beauty care products victimizes women of color.

A New Solar Water Heating System Goes Online as Its Developer Enters the US Market

By Dan Gearino — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 14:30:00 +0000

Solar thermal energy could be a “sleeping giant” in the push to reduce emissions from heating and cooling.

By Dan Gearino

From a distance, the energy system on top of a college residence hall in Omaha, Nebraska looks like photovoltaic panels.

As New York Officials Push Clean Hydrogen Project, Indigenous Nation Sees a Threat to Its Land

By Nicholas Kusnetz — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

The Tonawanda Seneca see the industrial development next door as a threat to the woods they depend on for game and medicines, and the failure of the company and permitting agencies to consult them as another assault on their treaty rights.

By Nicholas Kusnetz

When Chief Roger Hill speaks about the clean energy project going up along the border of the Tonawanda Indian Reservation, he turns quickly to the past. Hill’s Seneca ancestors once controlled a large territory across the rolling, wooded hills in what is now western New York, but most of their lands were taken through a series of treaties that shrank the reservation to its current size.

Corruption and Rights Abuses Are Flourishing in Lithium Mining Across Africa, a New Report Finds

By Katie Surma — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

The global clean energy transition could be a game changer for Africa, but exploitation of miners continues as many foreign mining companies ignore local opposition.

By Katie Surma

On a Sunday afternoon in March 2023, Darlington Vito was shot in the head outside an industrial lithium mine in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe.

Dominion’s Proposed Virginia Power Plant Casts Doubt on Its Commitments to Clean Energy

By Jake Bolster — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

The company has proposed building a natural gas facility in Chesterfield, Virginia, despite laws mandating it reach zero-emissions by 2045.

By Jake Bolster

In 2020, the Virginia Assembly passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, a law that required the state’s largest utility provider, Dominion Energy, to generate all of its power using only renewable energy by 2045.

Wood Pellet Giant Enviva Discloses a Financial Crisis

By James Bruggers — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 03:23:25 +0000

The company’s stock price plunged as its new interim CEO announced financial losses. Environmentalists had long questioned a business model they said was based on greenwashing.

By James Bruggers

A financial crisis has enveloped Enviva, the Maryland-based company that’s been harvesting large swaths of forest in the Southeast United States to make wood pellets for electricity production in the United Kingdom and Europe.

UAW Settles With Big 3 U.S. Automakers, Hoping to Organize EV Battery Plants

By Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

GM agreed to pay raises of 25 percent over five years, powered by hefty federal investments in EV manufacturing. The UAW’s president says the union refused “to pick between good jobs and green jobs.”

By Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa

The shift to electric vehicles is looking better today for U.S. auto workers than it did before a strike against the three major Detroit automakers, thanks to agreements that expand the reach of the United Auto Workers to include battery manufacturing plants.