The 2021 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment
December 16, 2020
SEJournal looks ahead to key issues in the coming year with this 2021 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment special report. The report was formally launched Jan. 27, 2021, at an annual roundtable organized by the Society of Environmental Journalists, hosted virtually by National Geographic Society and co-sponsored by the Wilson Center. Check out the guide s various Backgrounders, TipSheets and WatchDog reports, an overview analysis and coverage of the roundtable:
2021 Guide Event Coverage
The Uinta Basin lies in the northeast corner of Utah and has seen oil and gas development since 1925. The proposed railway could take one of three potential routes – the favored of which would run through 390 acres of state lands and 401 acres of roadless U.S. Forest Service lands.
This story was originally published by the Guardian
as part of their two-year series, This Land is Your Land, examining the threats facing America’s public lands, with support from the Society of Environmental Journalists, and is republished by permission.
In July 2019, a proposed railway intended to shuttle fossil fuels across a mountainous corner of eastern Utah received a $28 million grant from a local, state-run community fund. The financing allowed the group behind the railway – the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition – to kick off a federally mandated environmental impact survey, that would need to be completed before construction could begin.
My Turn: The selling of New England’s river STAFF PHOTO/MARY BYRNE STAFF PHOTO/MARY BYRNE
Modified: 12/11/2020 2:45:37 PM
On Nov. 12 FirstLight and broker Energy New England sent out a paid press release with a Twitter link on Businesswire: “21 New England Municipal Electric Utilities Commit to Historic Purchase of Clean Power From FirstLight Through ENE.” Formatted like news, it hyped agreements overwhelmingly to eastern Massachusetts towns, for future electricity exports. It boasted big complex numbers, long-term megawatts and clean, renewable hydropower sales to towns 100 miles from the source.
Factually, if all that hyped power was directed to the coastal town of Hingham (pop. circa 23,000) on that list, all 20 others, including tiny outliers in Vermont and Rhode Island, would be left in the dark.