Providence Journal: First Foundation for Deepwater Wind Farm Installed on U.S. Coast

After days of waiting for the seas off Block Island to calm, Deepwater Wind on Sunday finally installed the first foundation for the five-turbine wind farm it’s building in waters off Block Island.

Within minutes of the steel latticework structure being lowered into the Atlantic Ocean waters about three miles southeast of the island at 2:30 p.m., Jeffrey Grybowski, chief executive of Providence-based Deepwater, tweeted a photo of the moment and announced that the company had reached a milestone known in the offshore energy industry as “steel in the water.”

Business Insider: Apple May Be Teaming Up With BMW for an Electric Car

Apple has reportedly been in talks with BMW about using its i3 vehicle as the basis of an electric car, according to German-language publication Manager Magazin.

Since February, there has been a slew of reports about Apple's interest in the automotive industry. It reportedly has hundreds of employees working on the project, code-named "Project Titan." There's no guarantee that we will ever see a commercial release, but the Cupertino company is clearly increasingly interested in the space.

Foreign Policy: Oil Glut Sends Crude Prices Tumbling and Hammers U.S. Producers

Oil bears are rampaging across the globe, sending crude prices tumbling to six-month lows and raising fears of a reckoning for the U.S. producers who helped create the mess in the first place.

Crude oil dropped again in early trading in London and New York, sending prices well below $50 a barrel in the United States and just over $50 in Europe, before clawing back their losses later in the session. But the months of respite for oil traders seem to be over: Brent crude has lost almost 20 percent in July.

Guardian: World Bank Rejects Energy Industry Notion That Coal Can Cure Poverty

The World Bank said coal was no cure for global poverty on Wednesday, rejecting a main industry argument for building new fossil-fuel projects in developing countries.

In a rebuff to coal, oil and gas companies, Rachel Kyte, the World Bank climate change envoy, said continued use of coal was exacting a heavy cost on some of the world’s poorest countries, in terms of local health impacts as well as climate change, which is imposing even graver consequences on the developing world.

“In general, globally, we need to wean ourselves off coal,” Kyte told an event in Washington hosted by The New Republic and Center for American Progress. “There is a huge social cost to coal and a huge social cost to fossil fuels…if you want to be able to breathe clean air.”

Washington Post: EPA Will Ease Deadlines on Pollution Rule to Help States Comply

The Obama administration has decided to give states more time to comply with proposed regulations that will require dramatic cuts in greenhouse-gas pollution from power plants, people familiar with the plans said Tuesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency will give states an additional two years -- until 2022 -- to begin phasing in pollution cuts, even as the agency toughens the standards that many states will ultimately have to meet.

At the same time, the EPA will offer credits and other inducements to encourage a rapid shift to renewable energy under the Clean Power Plan, the administration’s ambitious and controversial proposal to cut pollutants blamed for climate change, said two people briefed on internal deliberations.