The oil industry has left a big footprint along the Gulf Coast, where a Delaware-sized stretch of Louisiana has disappeared. But few politicians would blame Big Oil for ecosystem abuse in a state where the industry employs up to 300,000 people and injects $73 billion into the economy. Until now.
Seventy-nine percent of respondents polled by an environmental group want the federal government to keep increasing fuel economy standards for automakers, according to findings released Thursday.
Back in June, Nissan told the world about its ethanol fuel-cell powertrain. This fuel cell, a first of its kind, uses sustainable bio-ethanol in place of hydrogen to create electricity, which is then used to power a vehicle.
An estimated 4,200 gallons of crude oil was discharged from a well owned by the Texas Petroleum Investment Company into the mouth of the Mississippi River, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard and other state agencies are now responding to the third oil spill in two weeks.
A pact that 15 U.S. states signed to jointly investigate Exxon Mobil Corp for allegedly misleading the public about climate change sought to keep prosecutors’ deliberations confidential and was broadly written so they could probe other fossil fuel companies.
The auto industry will need to step up introduction of fuel-saving technology to help the U.S. meet aggressive goals to combat climate change despite manufacturers’ requests for relief from existing rules, the Environmental Protection Agency’s top transportation official said.
After cruising along for more than two years, California’s vaunted cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions has run into a few recent snags.
California regulators are facing pressure to tighten up their rules for zero-emission vehicles.
A corner of the nation that seemed poised only a few years ago to become a new energy hub is now gripped by a debate over whether transporting volatile, hazardous crude oil by rail through cities and environmentally delicate areas can ever be made safe enough.
As these vehicles inch tantalizingly closer to reality, we are starting to imagine an entirely new transportation system, in which self-driving electric vehicles are organized into shared city fleets, and dispatched by smartphone to satisfy transportation demand.
