As the coal industry continues to decline, corporations are doing everything they can to hold on to their power while oil and gas interests continue to dominate American energy policy. The Climate Investigations Center, keeps a watchful eye on the actions and rhetoric of these fossil fuel titans, which more often then not, promote an agenda of climate denial and back door deals.
Latest News in Coal
- Former Energy Secretary Moniz, Guru of Kemper “Clean Coal” Debacle, Joins Board of Spendthrift, Climate-Denying Southern Company He Oversaw
- Washington Post: Exxon, Koch, and Big Coal Cash Begat Trump Climate Denial
- Clean Coal Officially Dead in Mississippi as Southern Company Battered by Kemper Fall-Out
- Southern Company Says Kemper Not Viable as Coal Plant, Blames the PSC
- Southern Company’s Kemper Coal Plant Could Get Billions in Tax Credit Bail-Out
The Latest on Oil & Gas
- INVESTIGATION: Corporate Polluters Inside US Delegation at UN Negotiations Over Fifty Years Ago
- “Americans for Climate Solutions”- a Pennsylvania gas export front group? runs TV ads during 2022 mid-term elections
- CO2 Pipelines 2022: Reference Material
- PBS Frontline “The Power of Big Oil” Viewer’s Guide: Documents and Reference Material
- CO2 Pipeline CCS Satartia Investigation: Background Materials and Bibliography
Kemper Investigations
Former Energy Secretary Moniz, Guru of Kemper “Clean Coal” Debacle, Joins Board of Spendthrift, Climate-Denying Southern Company He Oversaw
Ernest Moniz, an enthusiastic booster of Southern Company’s Kemper “clean coal” power plant on which his Department of Energy spent almost a half billion dollars only to see it abandoned when the technology failed to operate, is joining the board of directors of Southern Company, the utility giant announced late Monday. In a bizarre twist …
CIC Demands Energy Chief Perry’s Travel Records– and Moniz’s with Southern CEO Fanning
In his October 12th congressional testimony about why he cost U.S. taxpayers some $56,000 for travel on non-commercial aircraft, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry suggested that his predecessor, Ernest Moniz, had done essentially the same thing. Indeed, the Secretary may have a point – – but only because some of Secretary Moniz’s travel was highly …
Despite Huge Losses and Its own Bungling, Southern Company Wants to Complete Vogtle Plant
With Southern Company’s board voting today to green light the completion of the Vogtle nuclear power plant, the prospect that Georgia utility customers may be on the hook for many billions for a plant that may never be economically feasible becomes very real. Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning has blamed the bankruptcy of nuclear reactor …
ExxonMobil
“Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections” Science, January 2023, Supran, Rahmstorf, Oreskes – Reference Documents on ClimateFiles.com
A new study published in Science this week references multiple internal Exxon documents that are available in original form on ClimateFiles. The study got a lot of news coverage: New York Times, Guardian, Associated Press, Politico, LA Times, NPR, CNN, CNBC…
PBS Frontline “The Power of Big Oil” Viewer’s Guide: Documents and Reference Material
This post includes some of the documents, advertisements and news clips that were featured in the three part documentary, “The Power of Big Oil,” aired April 2022. I have also included additional resources from our ClimateFiles archive where appropriate PART ONE: DENIAL You can watch and find a handy transcript of Part One here. Global …
New York Times on Exxon, Russian sanctions and the role of oil and gas in Putin’s war on Ukraine
An investigation published on March 24 in the Business Section of the New York Times by Hiroko Tabuchi tells the long history of Exxon/ExxonMobil fighting US sanctions against the USSR and Russia – going back to 1981, President Reagan’s first year in office. As the Times story states: Those efforts, nearly a half-century ago, show …
American Petroleum Institute
SEC and “Climate-Related Disclosures” – Oil companies knew their “Scope 3” liability decades ago
Uh, they knew…. The landmark move by the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday to force corporations to expand the evaluation and submission of “climate-related disclosures” reminded me that in our ClimateFiles collection we have evidence that oil companies have seen this coming for a long time. They certainly were aware that their products, used as …
Global Climate Information Project ClimateFacts.org 1997 TV Ads
Success! Just recovered some 23 year old TV ads via my old friend Eric Gravley of PlanetVox. Way back in the late 1990s, early 2000s, before YouTube, before digital media, DVRs, “on demand” and all the things we take for granted today, Gravely and team ran a production studio, made documentaries and taped important stuff …
BBC Radio Series Tracks History of Climate Denial
The BBC has launched a two hour series on the history of corporate climate denial. The series starts in 1988 and traces the rise in climate policy attacks through the George W. Bush Administration in the 2000s. They been researching this series for several months. Great to hear it finally! Featured interviews include Naomi Oreskes, …