ThinkProgress: The Energy Department Is Reportedly Denying Funds for Already-Approved Grants

After proposing to eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) in its draft budget, the Trump administration, through the Department of Energy, has started withholding money for grants already approved by the agency, Politico reported Thursday, citing two unidentified sources.

The hold on the money for the grants began last week, Politico reported. During his run for the White House, President Donald Trump promised to target federal funding for agencies, like ARPA-E, that promote clean energy technologies.

Trump’s “America First: A Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” released March 16, eliminates all funding for ARPA-E and and a similar agency for vehicle technology “because the private sector is better positioned to finance disruptive energy research and development and to commercialize innovative technologies.”

Scientific American: Red States Rank Among Renewable Energy Leaders

Wyoming might be in coal country, but it's also leading the country in renewable energy capacity, a new report finds. Wyoming's expanding wind sector has placed it at the top of a ranking of states' clean energy development by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report found that renewable sources account for all of the new power plant capacity added to the state between 2016 and 2019. Wyoming also leads in terms of renewable energy development per capita.

“If you look at Wyoming, you might think about coal. But it tops all our metrics that look at new capacity, what's being built in each state in the near future, and the percentage of renewable energy in what they're building overall,” said John Rogers, energy analyst with UCS and the lead author of the report.

InsideClimate News: Fossil Fuel Industries Pumped Millions Into Trump's Inauguration, Filing Shows

Fossil fuel companies were not big donors to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, but they helped him shatter records in raising money for his inauguration festivities, according to new disclosures filed at the Federal Election Commission.

More than 1,500 corporations and individuals gave a total $107 million to the presidential inaugural committee. That is more than double the $53 million raised for President Barack Obama's then record-breaking inaugural in 2009.

Among the big donors were Chevron, which gave $525,000; Exxon, BP and Citgo Petroleum, which each donated $500,000; and the Ohio-based coal company Murray Energy, which contributed $300,000. Kelcy Warren, the chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, developer of the Dakota Access pipeline, gave $250,000. Continental Resources, the Oklahoma-based fracking company whose chief executive Harold Hamm was an early Trump supporter, gave $100,000.

Bloomberg: Gigantic Wind Turbines Signal Era of Subsidy-Free Green Power

Offshore wind turbines are about to become taller than the Eiffel Tower, allowing the industry to supply subsidy-free clean power to the grid on a massive scale for the first time.

Manufacturers led by Siemens AG are working to almost double the capacity of the current range of turbines, which already have wing spans that surpass those of the largest jumbo jets. The expectation that those machines will be on the market by 2025 was at the heart of contracts won by German and Danish developers last week to supply electricity from offshore wind farms at market prices by 2025.

Energy Collective: Efficiency Is a Crucial Building Block for the Energiewende

When the German Ministry of Energy and Economic Affairs published its "green" paper on energy efficiency, it not only put the spotlight on efficiency -- it also started the conversation around a necessary underlying energy policy framework. Until now, energy efficiency has been viewed merely as an additional service offered to end-use customers, but rarely as one of the fundamental building blocks for a successful “Energiewende,” or energy transition, in Germany.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, today’s energy markets do not automatically consider the economic value of demand-side resources, such as energy efficiency or load shifting, not even in competitive markets. Every saved or avoided kilowatt-hour has a long-term system value of 11 to 15 euro cents, based on avoided generation, transport and distribution costs. Most efficiency investments cost even less. Yet Germany, like many other countries, opts primarily for supply-side options. This disconnect is driven by the notion that liberalized energy markets are the perfect, and therefore the only, way to achieve an economically efficient energy sector.