Month: March 2017

Enlarge (credit: Kym Farnik)

Despite the executive order signed by President Trump this afternoon to roll back the Clean Power Plan, it’s unclear that much will change in the US for the declining coal industry. An annual survey conducted by UtilityDrive and research firm PA Consulting asked 600 utility executives from around the country to answer a series of questions about how their utility is run and how it’s preparing for the future. Notably, only four percent of the respondents said that they expected to increase coal power in their energy mix moderately or significantly. Most responded that coal power would remain the same or decrease over the next 10 years. Fifty-two percent of the respondents expected coal power to “decrease significantly” in their energy mix.

The story is similar for oil, which would also benefit from a Clean Power Plan rollback. Only four percent of utility executives expected their utility to increase oil in their energy mix moderately or significantly. The majority (42 percent) expected oil to stay the same in their energy mix over the next 10 years. The rest expected oil to decrease.

Trump’s Tuesday executive order asks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw the 2014 Clean Power Plan set by the Obama Administration and put in place another, weaker set of rules governing greenhouse gas emissions. The Clean Power Plan asked states to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 32 percent of 2005 levels by 2030 and gave states considerable leeway in how they achieved the rule's goals. But aging, polluting coal infrastructure would have had trouble meeting its requirements.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images )

The House of Representatives voted today to eliminate ISP privacy rules, following the Senate vote to take the same action last week. The legislation to kill the rules now heads to President Donald Trump for his signature or veto.

The White House issued a statement today supporting the House's action, and saying that Trump's advisors will recommend that he sign the legislation. That would make the death of the Federal Communications Commission's privacy rules official.

The rules issued by the FCC last year would have required ISPs to get consumers' opt-in consent before selling or sharing Web browsing history, app usage history, and other private information with advertisers and other companies. But lawmakers used their authority under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to pass a joint resolution ensuring that the rules "shall have no force or effect" and that the FCC cannot issue similar regulations in the future.

(credit: Uber)

For the first time, Uber released diversity figures for its employees—which does not include its thousands of drivers, whom the company considers to be contract workers.

Like many other Silicon Valley companies, Uber's labor force—in particular its tech staff—is overwhelmingly male and largely white.

According to a series of figures posted Tuesday, the company even called out the fact that its leadership "is more homogenous… no Black or Hispanic employee holds leadership positions in tech."