Earthjustice received some superb video today from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, of Shell’s beat up Arctic drilling rig, the Kulluk, as it was lifted onto a huge dry haul ship to be carried to Asia for repairs:

This comes on the heels of a report from the Department of Interior, which summarized  a 60-day investigation into Shell’s 2012 Arctic Ocean drilling season and was highly critical of the oil giant’s operations.

Battery systems would store surplus renewable energy when it’s produced for use later.  (LBNL)

Most people know that solar and wind energy is only generated when the sun shines or the wind blows. This leaves potential power gaps at times of no sun or wind. One of the Holy Grails of renewable energy has been storage systems (think battery here) that can store surplus energy when it’s produced for use later.

Various technologies are being explored, and widespread use should not be far off. With the current move from fossil fuel to renewables, we need to push utilities now to acquire storage. If we don’t, their tendency is to stick to business as usual, which favors burning fossil fuels.

Earthjustice is currently before the California Public Utility Commission, arguing the need for such storage. We’re careful not to tell the PUC or utilities what type of storage they must have, only that they must have it.

Big Sandy coal plant. (Chris M / Flickr)

She’s big, dirty and 42-years old—that’s old in power plant years.

They call her Big Sandy in Kentucky and she has two and a half years to clean up her act until she’s either shut down or replaced with newer, cleaner energy resources.

Right now, she burns millions of tons of coal each year, equaling about 90 railroad cars of the black fuel every day. She emits more than 37,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 3,700 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 5.6 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2010. That’s a whole lot of air pollution.

The Kentucky Power Company, owned by mega-energy giant American Electric Power, had proposed a near billion dollar upgrade to make the coal-fired power plant based in Louisa, legal and clean up her air pollution. But the price tag would be passed along to Kentucky ratepayers, who were bracing for a more than 30 percent increase in their electricity bills.

The corn rootworm is taking a bite out of Monsanto's bottom line. (Purdue University)

Pesticide-resistant bugs eat Monsanto’s crops, lies & profits
Monsanto is taking a page from George Orwell's 1984 with the recent release of an EPA report that chides the biotech company for not adequately monitoring its pesticide-resistant crops, reports Mother Jones. According to the agency’s report, a pesky bug known as corn rootworm is rising up and decimating corn fields in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Nebraska. Unfortunately for Monsanto and its farmers, the insect is targeting Monsanto’s Bt corn, which is engineered precisely to resist rootworm. The problem of pesticide resistance is a well-known issue amongst those in the ag and business world these days. In fact, Earthjustice is suing the USDA for failing to adequately asses the environmental and economic impacts of Monsanto's RoundUp Ready crops. But despite evidence to the contrary, Monsanto continues to deny that its products propagate pesticide-resistant bugs and weeds, all while promoting new genetically engineered seeds designed to “fix” the very problem that it won’t admit it created. That is some clever doublespeak indeed.

Greenpeace successfully prompts Facebook to “like” clean energy
After two years of prodding by Greenpeace, Facebook has announced that it will move away from dirty coal and power its operations using clean, sustainable energy, reports the UK Guardian. According to a Greenpeace report, more than half of Facebook’s electricity is powered by coal. That’s bad news for the climate and for clean air, considering that coal plants are the nation’s worst toxic air polluters (though that could change thanks to a recent Earthjustice victory wherein the EPA set the nation’s first-ever toxic air pollution limits for power plants.) In the meantime, though, moving off coal is a great first step to greening one of the most popular social networking sites out there. Now we just need to keep a close eye on Facebook to make sure it lives up to its largely vague green promises.