“Energy Matters”

Emergency crews in Kansas are preparing to labor through the weekend to clean up the largest US crude oil spill in nearly a decade, after a mysterious rupture in the Keystone pipeline.

The pipeline that runs from Canada to Oklahoma lost about 14,000 barrels, or 588,000 gallons, in a spill larger than all prior breaches of the Keystone system combined, officials said Friday.

The spill sent oil gushing into a creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles northwest of Kansas City.

How ironic that in our age of Net Zero we could be about to see the first ever nationwide bans and restrictions on electric cars. As Europe’s energy crisis continues to bite, emergency proposals have been drawn up by the Swiss government to help deal with potential blackouts and electricity shortages. One proposal calls for the use of electric cars to be limited to only essential journeys.

Around 700,000 households in Ireland are now in energy poverty as a result of the ongoing European Union gas crisis, MPs have claimed.

Elected representatives from the Rural Independent Group have claimed that 700,000 households have been put into energy poverty, with TDs — the Irish equivalent of MPs (Members of Parliament) — claiming that the government’s continued implementation of carbon taxes and failure to implement any sort of caps have dramatically worsened the situation.

Switzerland will ban the use of electric cars for ‘non-essential’ journeys if the country runs out of energy this winter, the government has announced.

Emergency plans drawn up in the event the Swiss are hit by blackouts also call for shop opening hours to be reduced by up to two hours per day, heating systems in nightclubs to be turned off, and other buildings to be heated to no more than 20C.

Crisis measures could see streaming services and games consoles banned, Christmas lights turned off, and all sports stadiums and leisure facilities closed.

h/t Mauser

SAINT-AVOLD, France (AP) — The end of France’s coal era seemed so certain last year that the operator of one of the country’s last coal-burning plants posted an upbeat educational video on YouTube titled “Let’s visit a coal plant that’s going to be destroyed!”

The plant in the northeastern town of Saint-Avold indeed halted coal production as scheduled earlier this year — but not for long. This week, its workers were back at the controls, transporting coal from storage heaps and refiring furnaces, as part of emergency efforts to keep the heat and electricity on this winter.