Forecast trends suggest that Hurricane Florence, which is currently swirling away as a Category 4 storm in the open Atlantic, could make a run at the East Coast by early next week — though there's still a great deal of uncertainty.
What we're watching: Weather patterns across the Atlantic as well as a broader cycle of atmospheric circulation, known as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, are combining to make the Atlantic far more favorable to storm development than it has been all season.
The Washington Examiner reports that key utilities, including Duke Energy and American Electric Power, aren't looking to extend the lives of their coal-fired power plants despite Trump administration moves to help keep them running.
Why it matters: Their piece gets several utility powerhouses on the record about their plans and signals the uphill climb facing the White House as it tries to revive the fortunes — or even substantially slow the decline — of the once-dominant fuel.
Newly published research finds that luck plays a role in oil-and-gas executives' compensation — and one author says it's time to rethink how C-suite pay is structured.
Reproduced from a chart by The Conversation; Data: Standard & Poor's Compustat; Chart: Axios Visuals
What they did: Professors from UC-Berkeley and University of Michigan broke down 1992–2016 of data for hundreds of executives at 80 oil-and-gas producers, for their working paper (not peer-reviewed).
ExxonMobil is reasserting its self-imposed commitment to cut emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s the primary component of natural gas, as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to repeal regulations.
Why it matters: The comments, posted Tuesday by the CEO of XTO Energy, an Exxon subsidiary with large U.S. natural-gas operations, illustrate an awkward predicament facing industry under President Trump. Some of the biggest global companies are seeking to emphasize a social license to produce fossil fuels even as the Trump administration pursues aggressive regulatory rollbacks.
One of the most confounding areas of research is the battery, a technology that, while invented more than two centuries ago, is still frustrating scientists. But amid robust electric-car competition pitting the U.S. against Germany, China and other nations, researchers say their hopes are growing for a breakthrough.
Driving the news: One of the companies that has attracted much attention is Sila Nanotechnologies, an Alameda, Calif., startup that claims to have figured out how to build a working silicon anode, one of the two electrodes that make lithium-ion batteries work.
Tropical Storm Gordon is showing signs of intensifying as it approaches the Gulf Coast. It is forecast to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Wednesday in southern Mississippi, bringing storm surge flooding, high winds and heavy rains.
What we're watching: The storm has shown signs of intensification on Tuesday, including a burst of thunderstorms near the center of the storm, and increasing wind speeds as observed via satellite, radar installations and hurricane hunter aircraft.
A provocative opinion piece in the New York Times made waves over the long weekend. Financial journalist Bethany McLean argues that the U.S. fracking boom rests on a shaky, debt-laden foundation that may be unsustainable.
The bottom line: McLean, who helped uncover the Enron scandal and co-authored the book "The Smartest Guys in the Room," covers a lot of ground.
Steeply cutting global carbon emissions will be tougher without expanding nuclear power, but its future is dim absent project cost reductions and supportive policies, a new MIT study concludes.
Why it matters: Nuclear energy faces very limited long-term prospects in the U.S. and a number of other countries, thanks in part to huge upfront costs to build new plants.
Bubbling beneath the battle for control of Congress during this year’s election cycle is a series of consequential energy and climate fights.
Why it matters: The midterm elections will go a long way in shaping both state-level policies and Washington’s future appetite to consider legislation in this area. Here are six electoral moves on my radar.
