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energy

  • The new Environmental Protection Agency rules seek to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030. State's heavily dependent on coal, like Kentucky, are…
  • The Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition is making its voice heard across the state on energy issues.The activist group is planning to petition for a…
  • The Tennessee Valley Authority is pumping out a record amount of electricity from it's hydroelectric dams along the Tennessee River and its tributaries.…
  • The Tennessee Valley Authority’s board has chosen a former energy chief from North Carolina to succeed retiring Tom Kilgore as the chief executive of the…
  • Coal mines in Kentucky and West Virginia will send millions of tons of coal to India, under the terms of a 25-year contract that was signed Wednesday. As…
  • Kentucky is number one on a list of the states with the most toxic air pollution from power plants. The Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed the data self-reported by industries in the Toxic Release Inventory, which is managed by the federal government. The most recent data is from 2010, and that year, Kentucky’s power plants emitted more than 40 million pounds of toxic air pollution. This gives the state the dubious honor of being ranked number one in the nation. “The first thing Kentucky has failed to do, relative to the states that have seem the most dramatic improvement, is adopt any kind of state law or regulation that requires substantial reductions in mercury or toxic pollution from the power sector,” said John Walke, the air director of the NRDC. The 20 states profiled in the NRDC’s report—dubbed the “Toxic Twenty”—account for 92 percent of the nation’s electric sector toxic air pollution. But they also just account for 62 percent of the United States’ electricity generation. In Kentucky, nearly 80 percent of the state’s air pollution comes from power plants that burn coal and oil. The three most polluting plants are the Paradise Fossil Plant in western Kentucky, the Big Sandy plant in eastern Kentucky and the Mill Creek Generating Station in Louisville. Walke says the fact that most of Kentucky’s pollution is caused by power plants is both a problem and a solution “Cleaning up toxic pollution from power plants will benefit Kentucky residents to a greater degree than almost any other state in the union,” he said. There is hope that Kentucky’s air pollution will be greatly reduced in future years. In the face of new federal air pollution regulations, the state’s power plants will be forced to install new pollution controls by 2016. The operators of the Big Sandy plant also recently announced they were reconsidering an earlier decision to burn coal at the site. Here's the NRDC's full list: The states on the "Toxic 20" list (from worst to best) are: Kentucky Ohio Pennsylvania Indiana West Virginia Florida Michigan North Carolina Georgia Texas Tennessee Virginia South Carolina Alabama Missouri Illinois Mississippi Wisconsin Maryland Delaware
  • As the Environmental Protection Agency begins its public forums on coal mining permits in Kentucky, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell is rallying for coal to…
  • Murray State's public radio service 91.3 WKMS presents BURN: an Energy Journal, airing Thursdays, April 19 and 26, at noon. BURN: An Energy Journal is the…
  • The Kentucky state capitol will turn off unnecessary lights tomorrow night as part of International Earth Hour. This is the fourth consecutive year the…
  • US Senator Rand Paul says the federal energy department should stop its loan guarantee program for companies developing alternative energy products. The…