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Amy Harder

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Democratic senators pass torch to EPA on climate change

January 23, 2013 After years of trying—and failing—to get climate-change legislation through Congress, top Senate Democrats are publicly ready to hand over the power to President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency. “A lot of people don’t recognize that EPA has huge authority to reduce carbon in the air,” Senate Environment and Public ...

What you need to know about EPA's carbon rules

December 28, 2012 FROM NEXTGOV arrow Congress has voted on the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules controlling greenhouse gas emissions around 10 times over the past few years, and next year the agency is wading into the most controversial parts of the rulemaking. The politically charged debates conflate facts and myths, and important points with superfluous ones. ...

Utilities and generators are powerless against Sandy

October 29, 2012 FROM NEXTGOV arrow Major storms like Hurricane Sandy reveal one of the biggest public-perception gaps with energy: You don’t notice it until it’s gone. Over the next few days, millions of people living along the Eastern Seaboard stretching from the Carolinas to Canada are expected to find out the hard way just how ...

Protesters, security forces clash in Charlotte

September 5, 2012 Rowdy protesters and stepped-up security wreaked havoc in uptown Charlotte on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. For several hours in the afternoon, a standoff between police and protesters identifying themselves with the Occupy movement blocked roads that were originally not expected to be closed. This exacerbated traffic ...

Cops, cameras and copters keep eyes on Charlotte

September 3, 2012 FROM NEXTGOV arrow Watch out, convention-goers, because most of the time you’re going to be watched. To ensure the Democratic National Convention is as safe an event as possible, local and federal security forces are employing 4,000 police officers, 500 cameras, and two helicopters. The Charlotte police force, about 1,700 officers strong, is ...

Isaac prompts loan from petroleum reserve

August 31, 2012 The Obama administration is loaning 1 million barrels of oil to Marathon Petroleum in the wake of Hurricane Isaac, the Energy Department announced on Friday. The oil loan, which will come out of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, is not the same thing as an official release of oil from ...

Science, politics collide over extreme weather, climate change

July 3, 2012 According to some environmentalists and scientists, climate change was knocking down Washington’s door—and its power lines—this past weekend. About 4.3 million people throughout the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic lost power over the weekend in the wake of a series of unusually severe and long-lasting thunderstorms—known as a “super derecho”—that hit the ...

Sierra Club hires EPA official felled by 'crucify' comments

June 29, 2012 The Environmental Protection Agency official who recently resigned for saying the government should “crucify” bad actors in the energy industry will go to work for the Sierra Club to help its campaign against coal. The Sierra Club announced on Friday that it was hiring Al Armendariz, who resigned on April ...

Utility executive blasts EPA

June 1, 2012 Republicans in Congress complain that President Obama is trying to ban coal -- the nation’s most prevalent source of electricity -- through a flurry of rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Nick Akins, the new CEO of American Electric Power, one of the country’s biggest coal utilities, paints a ...

EPA proposes first-ever climate rules

March 27, 2012 The Environmental Protection Agency proposed limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants on Tuesday, taking the first major regulatory action to address climate change as promised by President Obama's administration soon after he took office in 2009. “We’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect ...