John Locke Updates: Economics & Environment

What can possibly unite these two items? Not only do they seem unrelated, but they also seem opposite. The first is from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It’s a graph…

This week Bloomberg Energy issued an attention-grabbing report on a serious waste problem with wind turbines: retired turbine blades are clogging up landfills. This problem is only going…

Several questions surround the coal-ash cleanup settlement agreement between Gov. Roy Cooper’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), several “Community Groups,” Duke Energy, and not electricity consumers. The agreement…

Prior to April 2019, Duke Energy had agreed with the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to close and excavate all but nine of its 31 coal-ash basins. DEQ had…

It’s a feature in reporting about solar energy to discuss how dramatically its costs have declined. That tends to be misleading because solar is a completely unreliable resource on its…

A pending major federal rule change could create a positive change for people’s electricity bills. That could be good news, especially for North Carolinians. This fall, the Federal Energy Regulatory…

As applications for wind farms are expected to increase, the debate over the costs and benefits of these facilities will continue.  The debate should be informed by experiences and data…

Here in North Carolina, in this century, per-capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy generation are down over 50 percent. We are witnessing falling emissions even as we are one…

Once again, a group of influential green groups and corporations promoted a global climate strike. Friday’s strike pushes young students to walk out of school and workers to leave work to…

I have good news. It’s news so ridiculously underreported that a recent Civitas poll found that 44 percent of North Carolinians somehow believe the environment in North Carolina…