John Fialka, E&E News

John Fialka

E&E News

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Past articles by John:

Old bomber will sniff the sky for geoengineering aerosols

NOAA will use a converted Air Force bomber to search the upper atmosphere for substances that could help the U.S. reflect sunlight away from Earth. → Read More

ACTIVISM: How 2 nuns helped Southern Co. wake up to climate

Two sisters helped persuade a polluting energy company to tackle climate change by fostering a relationship with its CEO and demanding change. → Read More

RENEWABLE ENERGY: U.S. is losing the solar race. Can big batteries help?

China is nearly dominant in producing solar panels. But the future of utility-scale batteries is still being written. It holds the promise of lower carbon emissions and the risks of mysterious fires. → Read More

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: U.S. lurches into a race with sprinting China

The most ambitious plan to jump-start the sluggish movement toward electric vehicles in the U.S. was unveiled last month in a $454 billion proposal. Its political prospects are dim. → Read More

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: China's plan: Beat America (and everyone else)

When it comes to electric vehicles, no nation has matched China's audacious plan. It wants to beat the world. → Read More

GEOENGINEERING: A 'taboo' idea could cool Earth, or harm it

Some scientists are finding fewer risks related to solar geoengineering than determined in earlier studies, adding emphasis to calls for a global body to monitor proposals that would inject substances into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from Earth. → Read More

BUSINESS: Walmart acted on warming. Here's how it made money, too

Can businesses ease the threat of climate change and be more competitive at the same time? That's the major question arising from experiments by Walmart and several environmental groups. → Read More

ENERGY TRANSITIONS: Greens who once fought nuclear power now lament its demise

American nuclear power is poised to fall off a cliff. → Read More

ENERGY TRANSITIONS: How co-ops are bringing solar power to rural America

In 2014, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association studied what some of its members saw as a touchy subject: local electricity powered by the sun. → Read More

FUSION: Perfect energy — if we can harness 'a miniature sun'

A panel of 19 scientists drawn from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recommended yesterday that the Department of Energy should continue an international experiment on nuclear fusion energy and then develop its own plan for a "compact power plant." → Read More

EMISSIONS: Say what? CO2 raises risk of space collisions

Two satellites orbiting at speeds of almost 17,000 mph collided in 2009 over Siberia. Those kinds of space crashes could happen more frequently as humans release more carbon dioxide. → Read More

DROUGHT: Cataclysms were predictable for 1,000 years. That's changing

As scientists peer into the history of American droughts before the National Weather Service began recording information, they are gaining a new understanding that points to a future with more frequent "mega-droughts." → Read More

WIND: Xcel learns to forecast wind, then shuts coal plants

Wind power has long seduced some U.S. utilities. Unlike coal, natural gas or diesel power, the wind is free. But learning how to forecast its force, and then handle it, has been a major hurdle for power companies. Few utilities have invested more in solving that conundrum than Xcel Energy Inc. → Read More

WIND: Meet 'the Captain,' the father of modern turbines

During the mid-1970s, a young engineering student, Charles "Sandy" Butterfield, met a professor who didn't need a weather vane to know which way the wind was blowing in the U.S. energy business. His name was William E. Heronemus, and he was very sure of himself. → Read More

SCIENCE: Could a rogue nation alter clouds to combat warming?

Plans for two experiments to potentially slow global warming by deploying tiny particles into the atmosphere have sparked an international debate over whether such tests should be allowed without some form of government scrutiny. → Read More

SCIENCE: Clouds' warming potential is frightening researchers

When it comes to the dangers of climate change, it may be the behavior of clouds — the wispy creatures of water, air and tiny particles — that becomes the master of man's fate. → Read More

SCIENCE: 3 things we know about Irma

Hurricane Irma is a Category 5 storm and a "dangerous major hurricane," according to the National Weather Service. Longtime observers have been shocked by its power and have warned that it could be one of the most infamous storms in Atlantic hurricane history. "Irma has me sick to my stomach," Eric Blake, a scientist at the National Hurricane Center, wrote in a Twitter message. "This hurricane… → Read More

TECHNOLOGY: Greener cooling could create jobs. Will Trump stifle it?

Earlier this year, one of the world's largest supermarket chains announced it would use a new refrigerant in stores across the United Kingdom. The switch to the new refrigerant -- called N40 -- is highly symbolic. Among commercial buildings, supermarkets are some of the biggest users of air conditioning, a demand that is rapidly expanding as the climate grows warmer. → Read More

TECHNOLOGY: Leaks you'll never see in food stores are warming the Earth

When newly graduated environmental lawyer Keilly Witman joined U.S. EPA in 2007, she was handed one of its toughest jobs. She had to convince supermarkets that their leaky air conditioning and refrigeration systems needed to be fixed or they would substantially warm the Earth's atmosphere. → Read More

GRID: America's frail defense against a nuclear-tipped threat

The first major U.S. military attempt to explore electrical effects in the upper atmosphere was a brutal, secretive and unsettling affair. It came in 1962, with a hydrogen bomb test called Starfish Prime. The 1.4-megaton warhead detonated at 250 miles over the mid-Pacific Ocean, creating an electromagnetic pulse that blew out streetlights and shut down telephone systems in Hawaii, 898 miles… → Read More