Smokestack

Researchers at Ohio State University have developed a way to extract energy from coal without burning it, eliminating the greenhouse gases which are usually emitted from the process.

From OSU:

Local residents will have their chance to offer comments on a draft version of the city’s sustainability plan at a meeting tonight.

Metro Government will start selling landscaping debris gathered from Louisville parks to a Rubbertown facility that will burn it for energy.

Last fall, a company called Recast Energy took control of a boiler in Rubbertown that supplies steam to the Lubrizol and Zeon Chemical plants. The boiler used to be coal-fired, but Recast engineered it to run on biomass.

Kentucky Congressman Ed Whitfield was on Platts Energy Week this weekend, responding to the energy and climate change issues President Obama mentioned in his State of the Union address. Whitfield, a Republican, is the chairman of the House Energy and Power subcommittee, and the interview can be summed up like this:

• Congressional action on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions is preferable than EPA action;
• ...but it will be hard to pass any sort of market-based approach through Congress.
• And really, is it necessary to regulate greenhouse gases?
  

A section of the Louisville Loop will be closed for two weeks, starting on Monday.

The Louisville Loop is the partially-finished bicycle path around the city. When it's finished, it will be about 100 miles, but right now it's only continuous along the Ohio River near downtown and into Southwest Louisville.

White Nose Syndrome has been found in two Kentucky state parks. State officials announced today that infected bats have turned up in caves at Carter Cave State Resort Park in Carter County and the Kingdom Come State Park Nature Preserve in Letcher County.

Louisville Gas and Electric has been granted a permit to use coal ash from the company’s Cane Run power plant to begin closing a pond on the site.

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-California) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) are expected to unveil their version of a carbon tax today.

But the legislation won't be like anything that's been considered before.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Called "fee and dividend," the legislation is an unusual variant on a carbon tax. It would impose a fee on carbon emissions at their source, such as coal mines, raising the price of fossil fuel energy.

The Speed Art Museum has produced photos (see image) showing the supposedly 300-year-old tree that was removed last year to make way for the museum’s expansion. The first picture is from 1974, the second is more recent.

A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that the price of renewable energy in Australia is so low that it’s now cheaper to invest in wind and solar power than in a new coal-fired power plant.

According to Bloomberg, energy from a new wind farm costs about $83 per megawatt hour. Building a new coal plant would cost consumers $148 per megawatt hour, and a new baseload gas plant would cost $120 per megawatt hour.