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From Crain’s Chicago Business | In a speech in Washington, D.C., Exelon Corp. Chairman and CEO John W. Rowe spoke about the Senate climate change legislation proposed Wednesday. Rowe said the bill is a reasonable compromise, but he put long odds on it going anywhere this year.
Get the full story: chicagobusiness.com.
Associated Press | Radioactive water that leaked from the nation’s oldest nuclear power
plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking
water to much of southern New Jersey, the state’s environmental chief
said Friday.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has ordered the Oyster
Creek Nuclear Generating Station to halt the spread of contaminated
water underground, even as it said there was no imminent threat to
drinking water supplies.
The department launched a new investigation Friday into the April 2009
spill and said the actions of plant owner Exelon Corp. have not been
sufficient to contain water contaminated with tritium.
By Julie Wernau |
Wind turbine manufacturer Broadwind Energy, Inc., based in Naperville,
reported a net loss in the first quarter of $14.1 million on revenue of
$22.2 million due to a decrease in demand for wind farm installations
the company said spread from late 2008 through summer of 2009. That
compares with a net loss of $7.2 million on $53.1 million in revenue
last year.
By Julie Wernau | Commonwealth
Edison Co. and Exelon said Wednesday afternoon they have decided not to
pursue a last-minute proposal this week in which the company was
offering $500 million in cash to state to fill a budget hole in
exchange for guaranteed future profits on electrical rates.
ComEd and its parent company, Exelon, also offered a pledge to commit
$1 billion during the next decade to projects that they estimated would
create 2,000 new “green” jobs in the state.
By Julie Wernau | If that bicycle is still in winter storage, The Active Transportation
Alliance wants you to take it out and bike to work.
Registration is open for the Alliance’s annual Bike to Work Week, June
12-18, and about 250 Chicagoland companies — including Bank of America,
Google and United Airlines — have registered to forgo motor vehicles
and public transit in favor of bicycles.
From Earth 911 | United Airlines recently made the first commercial flight powered by synthetic fuel, using RenJet which is derived from natural gas. “This flight confirms our assumptions about how this fuel performs on a commercial aircraft and is the next step in our effort to stimulate competition in the aviation fuel supply chain, promote energy security, environmental benefits and the creation of green jobs,” said Joseph Kolshak, United Airlines senior vice president of operations.
Get the full story: earth911.com
Associated Press | BP’s chief executive says that a containment
dome designed to cover the Gulf oil leak will be on the seabed
Thursday, and will be hooked up to a drill ship over the weekend.
CEO Tony Hayward told reporters Tuesday that if all goes according to
plan, the principal leak could be contained by early next week. But he
stressed that this procedure has never been done before at a depth of
5,000 feet, saying “there’s no guarantees.”
Dow Jones Newswires | Shares of Nalco Holding Co. leapt Monday on the news that oil giant BP is planning
to use the company’s chemicals to help clean up the massive oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico.
Nalco, which is based in Naperville, makes a dispersant chemical that will help break down the
oil. Its shares jumped 18 percent to $29.25, hitting its highest point since October 2007. Other companies with possible roles in the cleanup also climbed Monday,
including Clean Harbors Inc. BP said it will pay the costs to clean
up the spill.
Associated Press | BP says it will pay “all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs” resulting from the blown-out oil well that has caused a massive slick that continues to swell in the Gulf of Mexico.
Get the full story: BP says it will pay cost of Gulf oil spill.
By Wailin Wong | Chicago
office workers have spent a collective 12.2 years trapped in an
elevator or waiting for one in the last 12 months, technology company
IBM said in a new survey released today.
One of the questions asked respondents if they’ve gotten stuck in an
elevator in the last 12 months. In Chicago, 15 percent of workers said
they had been trapped, roughly on par with workers in the other cities
covered in the survey. Of that Chicago group, 57 percent reported being
stuck longer than five minutes.
By Kiah Haslett |
The Energy Department will make $25 million in funding available to northern Illinois homeowners and business owners to defray the cost of making homes more energy-efficient. The proposal couples the grant with at least $300 million in private capital raised from partners to fund the venture. Although the $25 million grant is spread over three years, the private capital will be available sooner, within the year.
(Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
Associated Press | The effort to preserve the land beside the world-famous Hollywood sign
has taken a typical Tinseltown twist: “To be continued.”
The Trust for Public Land said Wednesday it has received a 16-day
extension to finish raising the $12.5 million it needs to buy and
preserve the hilltop property from private developers. The trust hopes to buy the land from its Chicago-area owners and give it
to the city so it can be incorporated into the adjacent, 4,200-acre
Griffith Park.
By Julie Wernau
| In speech today at the Pew Center for Global Climate Change conference
at the downtown Chicago Marriott, John Rowe, chairman and CEO of
Chicago-based Exelon, spoke in favor of a market-based approach to
greening the nation’s energy sources, saying that energy policy can only
move forward once a price is set for on carbon emissions.
As things stand, Rowe said, energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear
are not the cheapest to build and produce, he said, and the current
subsidies and incentives that exist to try encourage companies to
produce energy from renewable sources are part of a system that is
inefficient, expensive and piecemeal.
Dow Jones Newswires | Hyundai Motor Co. and subsidiary Kia Motors Corp. each plan to start selling a midsize hybrid sedan in the U.S. market.
Hyundai will release a Sonata hybrid there at the end of this year. Featuring a lithium ion battery system made by LG Chemical Ltd., the 2.4-liter vehicle gets 39 miles per gallon of gasoline, or 16-17km per liter, in high-speed traffic and 37mpg in cities. It will be unveiled at the New York International Auto Show, which opens Saturday.
“The car has been tailored to the U.S., where people spend quite a long
time traveling in high-speed traffic,” a Hyundai official says.
From The Times Online | Lamar McKay, the chairman of Chicago-based BP America, said that he was “encouraged” by Obama’s decision to open up vast tracts of America’s coastline to exploration. “It’s a constructive step. We believe the industry has a strong track record of performance in the Gulf of Mexico and are confident that development can be done elsewhere in the same safe and environmentally sensitive manner while creating needed jobs,” he said.
Get the full story: timesonline.com.
