• CRITICAL MINERALSElectric Cars May Be the “Green” Choice, but They're Driving a Scramble for Critical Minerals

    By Milad Haghani, Abbas Rajabifard, Thomas Wiedmann, Simon Gossmann, and David A. Hensher

    Our cars are responsible for about 20 per cent of global carbon emissions. The move to electric vehicles (EVs) is central to the effort to decarbonize the world’s transport. But the clean-energy transition is also creating a new extractive frontier: the minerals that power electric car batteries. And the same forces that shaped the geopolitics of oil are re-emerging in the race to power the electric revolution.

  • ENERGY SECURITYFramework Reveals a Smarter and Faster Way to Retire U.S. Coal Plants

    Even as coal power continues its steady decline in the United States, more than a hundred plants still have no retirement plans—a gap large enough to derail national climate goals. A new study tackles a critical question: if market forces have already driven many coal plants to close, why are so many still running?

  • ENERGYNew Report Examines Fossil Fuel Ties of Dozens of Trump Administration Hires

    By Aidan Hughes & Martha Pskowski, Inside Climate News

    President Donald Trump spent the last nine months halting the growth of the American clean energy economy in its tracks. A new report found 43 fossil-fuel industry insiders among nominees and appointees to agencies charged with enforcing energy and environmental policy.

  • ENERGY SECURITYAs Trump Champions Fossil Fuels, the World Is Betting on Renewable Energy

    By Zoya Teirstein

    If you live in the U.S., seeing how the Trump administration is hobbling the development of renewable energy, you could be forgiven for thinking that renewable energy is on the outs. But the US is n outlier: Despite a U.S. retreat, solar and wind are overtaking fossil fuels globally, according to two new reports.

  • CRITICAL MATERIALSU.S. Energy Supply Chains Are Unlikely to Meet Anticipated Demand

    By Danielle McKenna

    The U.S. fast-growing energy demands for clean energy sources faces a problem: Under current supply chain conditions, the United States is on track to fall significantly short of surging demand for three clean energy sources: wind, solar, and battery. The shortage is due to the scarcity of critical raw materials such as nickel, aluminum, and silicon.

  • ENERGY SECURITYAdvancing Hydropower Innovation for a Modern Electric Grid

    Hydropower has long been a core resource for the U.S. electric grid. At Argonne, computer modeling and analysis are helping to shape the industry’s future by helping to optimize dam operations, integrate hydropower into modern energy systems, and mentor students.

  • ENERGY SECURITYHydroBoost: Increasing Hydropower Revenue with Realistic Forecasting

    By Brandon Hallmark

    Optimizing the revenue and power storage capabilities of hydropower plants is challenging because water flow varies with seasons and weather conditions.To help hydropower operators,researchers developed HydroBoost, an optimization solver.

  • CONSPIRACY THEORIESWhy Wind Farms Attract So Much Misinformation and Conspiracy Theory

    By Marc Hudson

    Like 19th century fears that telephones would spread diseases, wind farm conspiracy theories reflect deeper anxieties about change. They combine distrust of government, nostalgia for the fossil fuel era, and a resistance to confronting the complexities of the modern world.

  • NUCLEAR POWERNuclear Waste Could Be a Source of Fuel in Future Reactors

    In theory, nuclear fusion —a process that fuses atoms together, releasing heat to turn generators —could provide vast energy supplies with minimal emissions. But nuclear fusion is an expensive prospect because one of its main fuels is a rare version of hydrogen called tritium. Now, researchers are developing new systems to use nuclear waste to make tritium.

  • ENERGY SOURCESTrump’s Bid to Support Coal Could Cost Ratepayers Billions: Report

    By Alex Brown

    The market has spoken: Across the country, coal plants have phased out as they’ve been unable to compete with cheaper renewables and natural gas. A recent report found that 99% of existing U.S. coal plants “are more expensive to run than replacement by local wind, solar, and energy storage resources.” Mandates from the Trump administration to subsidize aging, uncompetitive coal plants would cause taxpayers billions and lead to a massive spike in energy costs.

  • PLUGGING ABANDONED WELLSPlugging America's Forgotten Wells: Study Addresses Decades Long Problem

    By Sydney O’Shaughnessy

    Since the drilling of the first oil well in 1859, millions more oil and gas wells have been drilled across the nation. Today, millions of wells – bout 3.4 million of them — sit idle, some for decades. One option for limiting the environmental and health impacts of orphaned wells is to plug them. But the question remains, with so many orphaned wells in the United States, what’s the best way to address this issue?

  • HOBBLING U.S. INNOVATIONWhy the U.S. Is Letting China Win on Energy Innovation

    By Stephen Lezak

    The frontiers of global technology have pivoted to AI and next generation energy. In AI, the U.S. has far outpaced any other nation, but in energy, the U.S. has just tied its shoelaces together. The reason isn’t technology, economics or, despite the administration’s misleading official line, even national security. Rather, it is politics. The fact is, the U.S. does not have an energy security problem. It does, however, have an energy cost problem combined with a growing climate change crisis. These issues will only be made worse by Trump’s enthusiasm for fossil fuels.

  • ENERGY SECURITYWill New Interior Department Rules Shackle Wind and Solar? Insiders Are Divided.

    By Rebecca Egan McCarthy

    Some Republicans felt that the massive budget bill that President Trump signed into law earlier this month did not go far enough in discouraging the growth of wind and solar power. So we know new Interior Department rules will slow wind and solar development — but we don’t yet know how much.

  • ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURENuclear Energy and AI Companies Seek Solutions at Argonne Summit

    Three U.S. Department of Energy labs host major forum dedicated to building the energy infrastructure needed to secure America’s digital competitiveness. Leaders in artificial intelligence and nuclear energy explored ideas for powering a digital future and streamlining nuclear technologies.

  • ENERGY SECURITYTrump Is Fast-Tracking New Coal Mines — Even When They Don’t Make Economic Sense

    By Katie Myers

    In Appalachian Tennessee, mines shut down and couldn’t pay their debts. Now a new one is opening under the guise of an “energy emergency.”