The Biden administration has made tightening efficiency standards for household appliances a target as he's built out his climate agenda over the past four years. 

"Making common household appliances more efficient is one of the most effective ways to slash energy costs and cut harmful carbon emissions," Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, who has spearheaded efforts to push households to adopt green energy alternatives, said in a statement. 

However, energy experts and manufacturers have warned that the Biden administration's regulations would lead to more expensive household appliances that are far less effective than current models.

"What these mandates – what these standards do is enforce a level of efficiency that doesn't make sense," said Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "And they compromise product quality. We've already seen this to an extent with the cost of clothes washer standards." 

The Department of Energy (DOE) introduced a final rule in February imposing stricter energy standards for residential clothes washers (RCWs), such as washing machines and clothes dryers. 

HOUSE SET TO CHALLENGE BIDEN GREEN ENERGY STANDARDS FOR WASHING MACHINES WITH ‘LIBERTY IN LAUNDRY’ BILL VOTE

Under the regulations, certain less-efficient models of washers and dryers would be barred from being sold, according to DOE. 

The department projected that the energy standards would collectively save American households $2.2 billion per year on utility bills while reducing nearly 71 million metric tons of "dangerous carbon dioxide emissions" over the next three decades. 

However, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers argued that DOE's washing machine regulations "would have a disproportionate, negative impact on low-income households" by eliminating cheaper appliances from the market. 

"Despite misleading claims to the contrary, these proposals are intended for nothing more than promoting innovation and keeping money in the pockets of Americans everywhere without sacrificing the reliability and performance that consumers expect and rely on," a spokesperson for the Department of Energy told Fox News Digital. "As evidenced in the Department’s testing and analysis, the proposed standards would not reduce product performance or negatively impact cleaning ability or cycle time."

In 2023, the EPA finalized a rule to accelerate a transition to more advanced refrigeration and cooling technologies that don't use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and proposed a second rule to manage HFCs in existing products. HFCs are chemicals common in household appliances, such as refrigeration, heating, and air conditioning units. 

The rule, set to go into effect in 2025, aims to phase out HFCs to achieve an 85% reduction by 2036.

But manufacturers reportedly privately predicted that the regulation would increase prices up to 20%, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

In February 2023, the DOE issued a proposal to target gas-powered stovetops, which was set to take effect in 2027 and affect 50% of current gas stove models. 

Under the 2023 proposal, DOE would have banned the future sale of gas stoves that consume more than 1,204 thousand kBtu per year. 

Restaurant owners have fumed over potential gas stove ban regulations.

"The majority of New York City restaurants use gas. It’s the most common stove in a high-volume kitchen," Peter Petti, executive chef at Upper East Side restaurant, Sojourn, told the New York Post. "Gas lets us do our job efficiently."

After facing pushback from Republicans and consumer advocacy groups, the DOE issued its final regulations, which will impact 3% of gas stove models, rather than the initial 50%.

The Biden administration doubled efficiency standards for light bulbs, requiring manufacturers to raise the levels for common light bulbs from 45 lumens per watt to more than 120 lumens per watt, a nearly 170% increase. Only LED bulbs will be able to comply with the standards, not compact fluorescent bulbs.

The DOE suggested that the regulations will slash greenhouse gas pollution by cutting 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the next three decades.

When it takes effect in 2028, the rule will knock most currently available LEDs off the market and increase the average price of the remaining ones from $2.98 to an estimated $5.68, an increase of $2.70 per bulb, according to Lieberman.

Results from a Residential Energy Consumption Survey indicate that fewer than half of households reported using LEDs as their primary or exclusive lighting source.

The DOE implemented efficiency regulations to prohibit new non-condensing gas furnaces by 2028, by requiring that non-weatherized gas furnaces achieve an annual fuel utilization efficiency of 95%.

The American Gas Association, American Public Gas Association, National Propane Gas Association and manufacturer Thermo Products filed a lawsuit against DOE, claiming that costs could increase for 30% of senior-only households, 26% of low-income households and 27% of small business consumers if the regulation were to go into effect.

"Yesterday, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would effectively ban natural gas furnaces and other gas furnaces that are found in more than half of U.S. households," AGA Vice President of Energy Markets, Analysis, and Standards Richard Meyer told The National Desk in a statement. "In five years, around Christmas 2028, if you have to replace your gas furnace, you may be saddled with hundreds if not thousands of dollars of additional costs to upgrade that equipment to comply with this rule."

The Biden administration amended its energy conservation standards, putting into effect stricter energy standards for ceiling fans.

According to an analysis from the DOE, the new rules would save households about $39 over the lifespan of the new energy-efficient fan, Fox Business previously reported.

The regulation faced backlash from the House Small Business Committee, which claimed in a letter to the DOE secretary that it could put between 10% and 30% of small business ceiling fan manufacturers out of business.

Biden's appliance regulations could soon be in jeopardy, as President-elect Donald Trump is expected to overturn much of the current administration's climate agenda when he assumes the presidency in 2025.

Fox News' Matteo Cina contributed to this report.

When the Sun is blazing and the wind is blowing, Germany’s solar and wind power plants swing into high gear. For nine days in July 2023, renewables produced more than 70 percent of the electricity generated in the country; there are times when wind turbines even need to be turned off to avoid overloading the grid.

But on other days, clouds mute solar energy down to a flicker and wind turbines languish. For nearly a week in January 2023, renewable energy generation fell to less than 30 percent of the nation’s total, and gas-, oil- and coal-powered plants revved up to pick up the slack.

Germans call these periods Dunkelflauten, meaning “dark doldrums,” and they can last for a week or longer. They’re a major concern for doldrum-afflicted places like Germany and parts of the United States as nations increasingly push renewable-energy development. Solar and wind combined contribute 40 percent of overall energy generation in Germany and 15 percent in the US and, as of December 2024, both countries have goals of becoming 100 percent clean-energy-powered by 2035.

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For many industries, lithium batteries just don’t cut it — they’re getting increasingly expensive, require too much space, and sometimes they are just overkill for many industrial use cases. Thermal batteries, on the other hand, can store energy in the form of heat for long periods, are often cheaper to invest in and deploy, and […]

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• Russia may deploy its navy to protect its shadow fleet transporting sanctioned oil.
• The West has increased sanctions on Russia's oil industry and is zooming in on its shadow fleet.
• Russia's economy faces challenges like inflation, a weak ruble, and high interest rates.

Russia may ratchet up "risky and threatening behavior" against NATO countries, including by using the Russian navy to escort its shadow fleet through Danish waters, Denmark said on Wednesday.

The Danish Defense Intelligence Service made the assessment in its annual security outlook published on Wednesday.

"If this happens, it will increase the level of tension," said the Danish intelligence agency.

Denmark's assessment came as the West turns up sanctions against Russia's important oil industry, a key contributor to its war chest.

On Monday, the European Union sanctioned more Russian dark fleet vessels — designated as such because they dodge the G7's oil price cap by either submitting falsified financial statements or not having proper insurance coverage. A day later, the UK also broadened its sanctions against these vessels.

On Tuesday, a dozen Western countries, including Denmark, the UK, Germany, Finland, and Estonia, agreed to step up checks on the insurance coverage of suspected shadow tankers transporting Russian oil.

Russia's shadow fleet of mostly aging oil tankers grew after the G7 imposed an oil price cap on Russian oil in December 2022. The shadow fleet has helped Russia circumvent Western restrictions and allowed it to continue trading its oil at market prices, according to the EU.

Energy accounts for about one-fifth of Russia's GDP. The country's oil revenue fell 24% last year on the back of sanctions.

Oil revenues continue to be under pressure this year. Russia exported an average of 70,000 barrels of crude a day so far — 2% lower than the 2023 average, Bloomberg reported.

Russian economy under strain

The West's increasing pressure on Russia's energy trade is aimed at further straining the country's finances after nearly three years of war.

While Russia's economy has helped build strong financial buffers in the past years as war raged on, the economy faces "increasingly large unsustainable burdens," wrote Mark Sobel, the US chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, a think tank, this week.

The energy giant's lucrative oil industry is also under pressure from global energy market dynamics, including an abundance of supply and slowing demand.

Russia faces numerous economic challenges, including soaring inflation, the plummeting ruble, record-high interest rates of 21%, and capital controls.

"Even if sanctions and blocked Russian assets are not going to bring Russia's economy to its knees in one fell swoop, they remain powerful leverage and can be used more forcefully in any agreement to end the fighting and secure Ukraine's future," wrote Sobel.

The U.S. on Wednesday issued fresh sanctions against several Russian-linked entities and individuals involved in the building of Nord Stream 2, the massive undersea gas pipeline linking Russia to Germany.

The State Department said it has re-imposed financial penalties against entities and individuals involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2, including project operator, Nord Stream 2 AG, and a Russian-based insurer that worked with companies involved in the pipeline's construction. 

Others included in the sanctions were a Russian-owned maritime rescue service, a Russian-based water transport logistics company, and more than a dozen vessel owners that were either formerly under sanctions designations or were being sanctioned for the first time.

State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. remains opposed to Nord Stream 2 as well as any efforts to revive it.

'WRONG-HEADED': ENERGY INDUSTRY LEADERS BLAST BIDEN ADMIN REPORT ON NATURAL GAS EXPORTS

Officials also cited Russia’s ongoing efforts to weaponize its energy resources, including throttling its piped gas supplies to Europe shortly after the start of its war in Ukraine in 2022.

"We're going to continue to work and ensure that Russia is never able to weaponize its energy resources and its energy positioning for political gain," Patel said of the new sanctions.

News of the new sanctions designations comes after both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines linking Russia to Europe were hit by a series of explosions in late September 2022. 

To date, no one has taken responsibility for the blasts, which U.S. and other Western leaders have described as an act of potential "sabotage." 

Russia has dismissed suggestions that it would blow up its own pipeline, with Russian President Vladimir Putin describing such a move as "idiotic."

PENTAGON ANNOUNCES NEW COUNTER-DRONE STRATEGY AS UNMANNED ATTACKS ON US INTERESTS SKYROCKET

Though neither pipeline was operational at the time, both lines were filled with gas under pressure.

Prior to Russia's war in Ukraine, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline had supplied roughly 35% of the European Union’s total Russian gas imports before Moscow halted supplies indefinitely citing "maintenance" needs. Nord Stream 2 was expected to double that capacity.

In the years since Russia’s war in Ukraine began, the EU has scrambled to offset its reliance on Russian energy supplies, including by purchasing more liquefied natural gas from the U.S. and other suppliers, by devoting more resources toward nuclear power and by building more regasification terminals, among other things.

The Biden administration released a draft report on Tuesday warning of potentially negative impacts to Americans should the president's moratorium on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports be lifted.  

The report, which concludes that growth in LNG exports could cause U.S. energy prices to climb by as much as 30% in coming years while contributing to carbon emissions, was quickly met with pushback by energy industry officials dismissing it as a "politically motivated" appeal to environmentalists. Meanwhile, one environmental group panned the same report as "weak and half-hearted."

The study comes weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is to take office and follows on President Biden's decision in January to pause all new U.S. LNG exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries, citing the need to better consider climate and economic impacts of such "sizeable" growth in sales of LNG to buyers in Asia and Europe. President-elect Trump vowed on the campaign trail to quickly reverse Biden's moratorium once he's in office.

The draft report analysis, which is now open for a 60-day comment period, found that U.S. LNG growth could cause prices to rise for U.S. consumers by as much as 30% in the near-term. Additionally, while it stopped short of recommending a full ban on LNG exports — in recognition of near-term demand from other countries — it also focused largely on the negative impacts for U.S. consumers, who Energy Department officials said could see energy prices rise by roughly $100 by 2050 as a result of the tighter demand. 

LEAVE THE OIL TO ME: TRUMP VOWS TO UNLEASH US ENERGY, UNDO KEY BIDEN RULES IN 2ND TERM

The analysis noted that boosting U.S. LNG exports beyond currently authorized levels could cause as much as 1.5 gigatons of CO2 equivalent emissions into the atmosphere by 2050, or roughly 25% of the nation’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

However, industry groups have pushed back on this assertion. One senior industry official told Fox News Digital that that data set models for a scenario that assumes the growth in LNG exports does not substitute any other forms of energy consumption, such as coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. In reality, this person noted, LNG is expected to help offset emissions from coal use in the EU and elsewhere by as much as 50-60%, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency.

While the analysis found that increasing exports would result in a roughly 0.2% rise in U.S. GDP, Energy Department officials told reporters Tuesday that the increase in GDP "does not necessarily correlate with a positive effect on broader public and consumer welfare."

In a statement released alongside the report, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm noted that increasing LNG exports would "generate wealth for the owners of export facilities and create jobs across the natural gas supply chain," but she suggested that the domestic price of natural gas would increase.

The study comes as U.S. sales of the chilled natural gas have boomed. The U.S. rose in 2023 to become the world’s No. 1 exporter of LNG, and current capacity is already slated to double by the end of the decade on the backs of current projects, according to estimates from the Energy Information Administration.

It also comes as Russia’s war in Ukraine has sparked new demand from U.S. allies in Europe, who have scrambled to purchase LNG to offset lost Russian piped gas, and Japan, an import-dependent nation that receives as much as 90% of its energy from outside suppliers.

The report, released just weeks before Trump assumes office on Jan. 20, sparked backlash from natural gas advocates.

TRUMP VOWS AT PENNSYLVANIA RALLY TO SLASH ENERGY COSTS, LIFT LNG PAUSE AND 'FRACK, FRACK, FRACK'

"Today’s report from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is clearly a politically motivated document designed for an audience who believes no form of carbon-based energy is acceptable," National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) CEO and President Jay Timmons said in a statement. "LNG exports play a crucial role in reducing emissions by providing cleaner energy alternatives to countries reliant on higher emission sources."

For its part, NAM conducted a study on the ban that found nearly 1 million jobs would be threatened by the LNG pause over the next two decades if the restriction remains in place, Fox News Digital previously reported.

American Gas Association CEO and President Karen Harbert described the report as a "clear and inexplicable attempt to justify their grave policy error."

"America’s allies are suffering from the weaponization of natural gas and energy deprivation and any limitations on supplying life essential energy is absolutely wrong-headed," Harbert said in a statement, adding, "The Biden Administration’s pause on American LNG exports was a mistake that resulted in uncertainty for the market, for investors, and for America’s allies around the world." 

The report is not without its critics from the left, however. 

The environmental group, Food & Water Watch, also slammed the Biden administration for the "weak" report cautioning LNG exports.

"This study mirrors the Biden administration’s entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," Jim Walsh, Food & Water Watch policy director, said in a statement. "We cannot continue to be victimized by the profit-driven agenda of fossil fuel corporations. President Biden must listen to the warnings of his own government by banning further LNG exports and rejecting pending LNG permits before he leaves office."

President-elect Trump, for his part, has also repeatedly pledged to undo the LNG pause upon taking office and to "unleash" U.S. energy exports, blaming high costs and supply issues on the outgoing Biden administration.

In October, he vowed at a campaign rally that U.S. residents would see their energy prices cut "in half" within one year of his inauguration.

Most recently, he vowed to "go strong on the issue" by moving to immediately lift Biden’s LNG pause to allow for new LNG exports after his inauguration, sources familiar with the transition plans told Reuters. 

The Biden administration has officially granted California permission to ban new gas car sales in the state by 2035. 

California set a strict emissions standard that would ban new gas cars in the state by 2035, but officials needed to obtain a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in order to proceed with the mandate.

The EPA on Wednesday announced that it would be approving two waivers, under the Clean Air Act, that grants California permission to phase out gas cars in the state — one of President Biden's final acts pushing the auto industry into the green energy sector. 

One waiver grants California's near future request to mandate that 35% of new cars and light-duty trucks sales be zero emissions by 2026 and achieve 90% below current emissions by 2027.

BIDEN EPA MAKES FIRST-EVER CLIMATE CHANGE ARREST

The other EPA waiver allows California officials to mandate that all new car sales be zero-emission within the decade — the most strict EV mandate in the country.

However, the waivers could soon be revoked by President-elect Trump, who is reportedly planning to rescind both federal EV requirements and any waiver issued for California by the Biden administration.

"Fresh off imposing his insane, job-killing electric vehicle mandate at the federal level, Crooked Joe Biden is preparing to slaughter the remnants of the U.S. auto-industry by approving California’s waiver request outlawing the sale of all gasoline-powered automobiles," incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital during the campaign.

FIVE WAYS TRUMP COULD DISMANTLE BIDEN'S CLIMATE AGENDA

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said that the waivers will "protect its [California] residents from dangerous air pollution coming from mobile sources like cars and trucks."

However, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers CEO and President Chet Thompson described the mandate as "unlawful."

"Contrary to claims on the campaign trail that they would never tell Americans what kinds of cars we have to drive, the Biden-Harris EPA just did exactly that by greenlighting California’s ban on sales of all new gas and traditional hybrid vehicles," Thompson said in a statement. "These policies will harm consumers — millions of whom don’t even live in California — by taking away their ability to buy new gas cars in their home states and raising vehicle and transportation costs."

General Motors might have scaled back its electric vehicle ambitions in favor of more hybrids, but it's still accelerating its plans to build out EV charging infrastructure. Today, together with ChargePoint, GM revealed that it will deploy "hundreds" of new DC fast chargers under the GM Energy brand in 2025.

"The transition to electric mobility continues to be driven by leaders such as General Motors offering innovative EVs and committing to make chargers as ubiquitous as possible," said Rick Wilmer, CEO of ChargePoint. "Our collaboration with GM represents a significant investment in the infrastructure to enable fast and easy charging for all. Together, ChargePoint and GM will deliver a seamless fast charging experience via reliable charging hardware managed by our industry-leading software platform."

Many (but not all) of the new chargers will be capable of delivering up to 500 kW, a higher power level than any EV currently on the market is able to charge. Many of the chargers will also feature ChargePoint's "Omni Port," which has both CCS1 and NACS (J3400) plugs, allowing almost all EV drivers to make use of them. (Sorry, Nissan Leaf owners.)

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• Gazprom's share price hit a 15-year low amid ongoing export challenges to Europe.
• It comes after the company posted its first annual loss since 1999 in May.
• The EU is pushing to phase out its use of Russian gas, impacting Gazprom's European market share.

Gazprom's share price tumbled to a new low on Wednesday, the latest episode in a calamitous year for the Russian state-owned energy juggernaut.

According to Russian outlet RBC, Gazprom's 106.1-ruble share price on Tuesday represented its lowest value since January 2009. As of Wednesday, the share price had dropped further to 105.75 rubles.

In comparison, just before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Gazprom's share price hovered around 300 rubles.

Analysts speaking to RBC attributed the slide to broader market factors as well as roadblocks in Gazprom's ability to export gas to Europe, as the continent doubles down on its commitment to end its dependence on Russian energy following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In May, Gazprom posted its first annual loss since 1999, and its share price immediately dropped by 4.4%. It continued to tumble through June, to a then-low of around 113 rubles.

The dreary May report reflected Gazprom's "loss of a significant share of the European gas market," Katja Yafimava, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told Business Insider.

Impact of Russia's war

Prior to 2022, Europe sourced around 40% of its natural gas from Russia. In June, a Gazprom report seen by the Financial Times said that it would take a decade for the company to recoup losses caused by the war in Ukraine.

Compounding the concerns, an agreement to transit Russian gas via Ukraine is set to end on January 1, 2025.

In September, European Commissioner Kadri Simson said that the EU is "fully committed" to phasing out Russian gas via the Ukraine pipeline. "We started preparing two years ago," she said.

The move away from Russian gas is not without its headaches for EU countries, and Slovakia is leading efforts from some affected countries to stop this flow running out.

On Monday, following a meeting with Slovakia's prime minister, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal reiterated what the country had been signaling for some time: that it has no interest in renewing the deal.

He added, however, that Ukraine is open to the transit of gas from other sources.

Yafimava told BI that "the transit question is still hanging in the balance," but a recent decision by Austrian energy company OMV to cut ties with Gazprom amid a thorny contract dispute has "arguably weakened" its chances of continuing.

OMV's decision earlier this month was a historic blow to Gazprom, with the company among the first in Western Europe to import and invest in Russian gas during the Soviet era.

Industry experts told Business Insider this month that the end of the OMV deal was a significant indicator of Europe's success in weaning itself off Russian energy, one that would have been unthinkable before the invasion of Ukraine.

Even so, Gazprom's problems in Europe are not a death knell for the company, Yafimava said.

Gazprom can stay afloat thanks to the large domestic gas market in Russia, she said, adding that the blow had been cushioned by sharply increased gas prices.

Gazprom needs to find new markets "while the cushion lasts," she added.

One option ahead for it is an agreement over Power of Siberia 2, a Russia-China pipeline that would sharply increase exports to China. "In my view, this will eventually happen," Yafimava said.

• Amazon will invest another $10 billion in Ohio data centers, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said.
• The company will consider locations outside its power-strained hub in Columbus.
• In exchange for tax credits, Amazon committed to more than 1,000 new jobs in its Ohio data centers.

Amazon has committed to spending $10 billion on the expansion of its Ohio data center operations, in addition to the billions of dollars it has already said it plans to spend in the state, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday.

The tech giant's new Ohio facilities, which should be completed by the end of 2030, will help power the push into AI by its cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services.

Just last year, AWS said it would invest $7.8 billion to expand its data center hub in Columbus and the surrounding suburbs. The company started building data centers in the region in 2015 and has at least six different campuses that are either operational or under construction.

Ohio has committed to spending more than $23 billion on data centers in the state between the money it has already spent and its committed investments, a spokesperson for Ohio's Department of Development said.

The investment in Ohio is part of Amazon's aggressive spending plan on data center construction to support AI demand. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company's third-quarter earnings call in October that it plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures in 2024, most of which will go to cloud computing and data centers, and it expects to spend even more next year.

Local politicians have dubbed the Central Ohio "the Silicon Heartland." Gov. DeWine touted the AWS announcement this week as "strengthening the state's role as a major technology hub."

Most of Amazon's data centers are located in Northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world. That area has become saturated with new facilities waiting to be connected to the electric grid. In the last 18 months, Amazon and its competitors have announced plans to build data centers in states nationwide. Just this year, Amazon announced plans to spend $11 billion on data centers in Indiana and $10 billion in Mississippi.

Job creation in Ohio

Ohio, which offers a generous slate of state and local tax incentives, including an up to 100% sales and use tax exemption for data center equipment, has seen a sharp uptick in development.

For this latest investment, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved additional job creation tax credits in AWS's existing economic development agreement with the state. In exchange for annual job creation tax credits, AWS has promised 1,058 "full-time equivalent" jobs with a minimum average annual payroll of $101.37 million, a spokesperson for Ohio's Department of Development told Business Insider.

Ohio law defines "full-time equivalent employees" as the result of a calculation, or "dividing the total number of hours for which employees were compensated for employment in the project by two thousand eighty." The employees must be directly employed by Amazon for the company to receive its tax credits, although there is no requirement for the kinds of jobs Amazon must offer.

When BI contacted AWS and asked what types of jobs would be available in its new Ohio data centers, an AWS spokesperson reiterated the information listed in Gov. DeWine's press release, which referred to the jobs as "new" and "well-paying."

Electricity demand rises

AWS's financial commitment to the state will hinge on whether local utilities can provide the amount of electricity the company eventually says it will need.

AEP Ohio, the Columbus utility that serves Amazon, said earlier this year that it received 30 gigawatts of service requests from data centers alone — an amount that would put the region's demand for electricity close to New York City's.

Much of that demand comes from the wealthy suburban enclave of New Albany, Ohio, where Meta, Microsoft, Google, and QTS are all constructing major data center projects. The site of Intel's future semiconductor chip plant is in neighboring Johnstown, Ohio. The New Albany Company, the real estate company founded by billionaire retail mogul Les Wexner, orchestrated many of the area's major land sales to tech companies, including Intel.

For its newest data centers, AWS will look to sites beyond the Columbus region, though no locations have been finalized, according to a statement from Gov. DeWine's office. If AWS locates a data center outside the Columbus region, it would likely be outside AEP's service territory.

AEP has asked Ohio's public utilities regulator to approve a tariff and a special rate class for data centers that would require the power-hungry facilities to pay for the majority of electricity they anticipate needing — even if they ultimately do not consume all of it.

The data center industry, including Amazon, is working to quash AEP's proposal. In a November testimony filed with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, Michael Fradette, who leads Amazon's energy strategy, called the proposal a "discriminatory structure" that "unfairly targets data center customers by targeting customers in specific industries."

The matter has sowed division among corporate interests in Ohio. Those who oppose the tariffs include the Ohio Manufacturers' Association Energy Group, a lobbying offshoot of the state's major manufacturing industry trade group, and the Ohio Energy Leadership Council, which is represented by David Proaño, a lawyer in BakerHostetler's Columbus office who also represents Amazon's data center business before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

Meanwhile, Ohio Energy Group, which counts Cargill, Ford, GE, and Intel as members, has testified in favor of AEP's proposed data center tariffs. Walmart, a large customer of AEP in Ohio, has also come out supporting the tariff.

AEP is planning new transmission infrastructure projects to service data centers in the Columbus area, as well as the Intel chip plant. The future of the chip plant, which is supposed to bring 3,000 advanced manufacturing jobs to central Ohio, is uncertain as the company debates spinning off its struggling foundry business.

Rising energy demand from Columbus area data centers has triggered the need for new transmission infrastructure. Under AEP's existing rate structures, the costs of new transmission lines to data centers could be spread to other ratepayers.

Many of AEP's residential, commercial, and industrial customers saw transmission costs rise by $10 monthly in April, the fourth rate increase approved for the utility in three years. Next year, average bill totals will increase another $1.50 a month to support grid reliability, the utility said.

Do you have insight, information, or a tip to share with this reporter? Contact Ellen Thomas via the secure messaging app Signal at +1-929-524-6964.

• The Hanford Site is the most polluted area in the US, though cleanup started decades ago.
• Estimates say it will take decades more and up to $640 billion to finish the job.
• The site just received record funding for cleanup, but the next administration may not follow suit.

Sitting on 586 square miles of desert in Washington, the Hanford Site has the most radioactive and chemical contamination in America.

Buried in storage tanks beneath the ground are 56 million gallons of radioactive waste. Many of them are leaking.

In the late 1990s, Washington's then-governor, Gary Locke, called Hanford "an underground Chernobyl waiting to happen," the Associated Press reported.

As part of the Manhattan Project, Hanford produced the plutonium to build Fat Man, the atomic weapon that was detonated above Nagasaki at the end of World War II, and for the United States' nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

In 1989, after years of dismissing concerns about contamination, the site's management finally said the site needed to be cleaned up. But cleaning up nuclear waste is difficult. It can't be burned or buried. Soon, a waste management plant will turn the waste into glass, which can be stored away for thousands of years. It's a slow, costly process.

Yet time is of the essence. The longer the contaminated materials are left untreated, the worse they become. Plus, natural disasters could spread the site's contamination.

Here's how Hanford became so toxic.

Hanford is built on a desert in Washington, spread over 586 square miles.

During the Manhattan Project in the mid-1940s, Hanford was one of three main sites where thousands of workers developed and built the world's first atomic bombs.

The government wanted both secrecy and security and chose an isolated location, away from cities on the East Coast. It's about 150 miles southeast of Seattle.

The Columbia River passes Hanford to the north and the east by a few miles, and it's downstream from two dams.

The government wanted the site to be close to dams for electricity and near the river so it had a source of liquid to cool the reactors. The rural setting meant the operation would have to displace fewer people.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation began operating on September 26, 1944.

The government purchased the land in 1943 and gave about 2,000 locals, many of them farmers and Indigenous people, 30 days to leave, The New York Times reported.

One resident, Annette Heriford, later said the government paid far less than the land was worth, per the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF).

The first reactor took 11 months to build, and the majority of the 51,000-person workforce did not know what they were working on.

They understood their work was related to the war effort, but the site's role in building a nuclear weapon was top secret.

The area experienced swift growth in just a couple of years.

There were so many workers that Hanford and nearby Richland swelled with thousands of new residents. Most were white men, but Hanford also employed Black, Indigenous, and Latino workers, in addition to white women, according to the National Park Service.

Hundreds of new buildings went up to accommodate the growing population, including banks, grocery stores, and cafeterias.

Some of these places were integrated, while others were segregated. Restaurants in the area barred Black workers from entering, Cascade PBS reported.

To keep the nuclear complex secret, the government barred trespassers and set up a buffer zone.

The area stretched along the Columbia River, covering hundreds of acres.

The B Reactor was the first large-scale nuclear reactor ever built.

It was the B Reactor that produced the first plutonium in the United States. The first supply of plutonium was delivered to the Army on February 2, 1945, just four months after the reactor began operating.

No one fully understood plutonium's effects on humans, wildlife, and the environment at the time.

The physicians working at Hanford reportedly knew radiation could cause illness, and they used dosimetry devices to monitor workers' exposure. They would wear badges containing photographic film that would develop an image of the protective case when exposed to radiation.

Hanford's plutonium was used in the Trinity test, the first detonated nuclear bomb.

Fat Man, the nuclear bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945, also contained Hanford's plutonium.

The bomb killed an estimated 50,000 people in Nagasaki, The BBC reported. Another 135,000 people died in Hiroshima, Japan, where the US dropped a uranium bomb a few days earlier.

Suddenly, Hanford's purpose was no longer a secret.

On August 6, 1945, Spokane, Washington, residents awoke to the news that Hanford was one of the secret sites responsible for the atomic bombs.

"Tongues wagged, workmen talked, nearly every truck driver who passed that way had his pet theory," The Spokane Daily Chronicle reported at the time. "Many may have guessed the correct answer. But still the riddle of Hanford remained — and the secret was kept."

After World War II, there was a brief production hiatus. But in 1948, plutonium became a priority again.

This time it was to supply the US with a nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. Six more reactors were built by 1955. Production continued into the late 1980s.

When the plant was up and running, using nine nuclear reactors and five reprocessing plants, it produced about 65% of the plutonium used by the US government.

The reactors weren't all built at once but over a 20-year period from 1943 to 1963.

Hanford produced 67 metric tons of plutonium in all.

That's a little less than the weight of 10 African elephants. Fat Man contained less than 14 pounds of plutonium, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

The site was responsible for a large part of the 60,000 nuclear weapons the US had made by 1987.

By the 1950s, scientists understood much more about the effects of radiation.

Some serious accidents and secret human experiments showed how deadly radiation sickness could be, according to the AHF. US officials suppressed information about how the bombs were causing severe illnesses and deaths in Japan, according to JSTOR.

In 1954, Life Magazine profiled Hanford employee Homer Moulthorp, who had created plastic suits to combat radiation sickness.

His friends referred to it as "Homer's Hideous Hallucination." Before that, the employees had to wear heavy clothing that had to be buried after being used once.

To learn more about radiation sickness, scientists conducted tests on rats, cats, dogs, cows, sheep, pigs, and alligators.

The researchers were trying to determine radiation's effects on people. In 2007, 40,000 tons of dead animals and manure were uncovered from trenches in Hanford, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. Most of the waste was manure, contaminated with radioactive strontium-90.

Decades of plutonium manufacturing left behind an enormous amount of nuclear waste.

Even producing a small batch of plutonium would result in a huge amount of contaminated waste.

In 1985, a newspaper story about a nearby community dubbed "death mile" detailed the high rates of cancer among farming families living near Hanford.

In a story for the Spokesman-Review, farmer Tom Bailie described the town of Ringold, Washington, about 11 miles southeast of the Hanford Site, as having unusually high rates of cancer.

The story's reporter, Karen Dorn Steele, later found the government had conducted a test in 1949 to learn more about how the radioisotope Iodine 131 moved through the air, per NPS. Thousands of Hanford Downwinders, as they called themselves, filed lawsuits against the government. All the lawsuits have since been either dropped or settled.

In 1989, the Tri-Party Agreement was signed to clean up the area.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Washington State Department of Ecology signed the agreement.

"It was at the end of the Cold War that the site's mission shifted from production of plutonium and that material to environmental cleanup," Ryan Miller, a communications manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology, told Business Insider.

By then Hanford was no longer making plutonium. Reactors started shutting down in the mid-1960s; the last one closed in 1987. It was exclusively a massive environmental hazard that needed to be cleaned up.

Despite the agreement, what would follow would be a slow, often halting, attempt to clean up Hanford, at a cost of $2 billion or more a year.

There are a host of challenges when it comes to cleaning up Hanford, from contaminated buildings and groundwater to leaky storage tanks holding radioactive waste.

Officials don't even know where all the contaminated material is.

In the '40s and '50s, working with radioactive material was still new, so much of the nuclear waste was improperly disposed of.

"One of the biggest challenges, at least back in the '80s when cleanup started, was documentation," Miller said. The agencies worked to figure out the scope of the problem, but they were hampered by poor record-keeping. "There's a kind of shroud of secrecy over the Hanford Site, especially during World War II," he added.

When Hanford first produced nuclear waste, workers buried contaminated clothes and tools in the desert, without recording the locations, The Daily Beast reported in 2013.

Hanford had different processes for different wastes: Slightly contaminated liquids went into ponds, solid waste was buried, and some gases were released into the air.

Across the reserve, there were nearly 1,700 waste sites.

During the production years, workers would dump barrels of waste and contaminated groundwater into unlined trenches, Miller said. The agencies have addressed over 1,350 sites so far, he added.

Solid waste can be anything from contaminated tools to clothing to broken equipment.

Liquid waste is usually contaminated water or sludge, which is described as having the same consistency as peanut butter.

Inspectors found 85 square miles of contaminated groundwater in the 1990s.

The contaminated groundwater had a footprint larger than Boise, Idaho. Hanford set up pump-and-treat facilities to treat the water and then re-inject it back into the ground, Miller said. So far, the facilities have treated over 32 billion gallons of groundwater.

In 2017, the EPA said contaminated groundwater was flowing freely into the Columbia River. The river's hundreds of thousands of gallons of water help dilute the uranium, tritium, and other substances that seep in, according to Washington's Department of Ecology.

Most concerning is the highly radioactive waste that was stored in 177 storage tanks, each holding between 55,000 and 1 million gallons.

The first 149 tanks were built with a single layer of steel. In 1968, officials developed a new double-shelled model, storing waste in 28 of them.

Altogether, the tanks contain twice the radioactivity released by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Russia, The Atlantic reported. By 1989, 68 of the 149 tanks had leaked 900,000 contaminated gallons into the ground.

"This waste poses, arguably, the largest kind of cleanup effort being done at the Hanford site, and one of the biggest risks," Miller said.

In 2010, Robert Alvarez, a former Energy Department official, said the amount of plutonium buried at Hanford could fuel 1,800 bombs, as reported by The New York Times.

In 1998, Hanford managers said they had been wrong to describe the tank leaks as insignificant for decades.

It was only after a million gallons of waste had leaked into the ground that the DOE said more information was necessary, The New York Times reported in 2010. A year earlier, a contractor fired an employee who voiced concerns about the issue "too vigorously."

"A lot of those tanks were built in the '40s, '50s, '60s," Miller said. "So all the tanks are well past their design life."

In 2013, new leaks were discovered in several underground tanks. While management already knew that one tank was leaking at a rate of up to 300 gallons of waste every year, the discovery that five more were also leaking was especially concerning, CBS News reported.

In 2002, work began on a tank waste treatment plant, which is key to cleaning up Hanford.

The treatment plant will turn the waste from the deteriorating tanks into glass, which can then be stored more safely for several thousand years. This process, known as vitrification, is expected to begin with some of the low-activity, less radioactive waste next year.

Once the vitrified waste is stored in steel containers, workers will dispose of the low-activity glass at a Hanford landfill, which has been engineered with barriers, Miller said.

There's currently no facility in the US capable of storing high-level waste long-term, so that too will stay at Hanford for the time being.

Radioactive cesium and strontium were removed from the underground tanks, put into capsules, and stored underwater.

Strontium-90 is also called a "bone seeker" because it acts similarly to calcium — accumulating in bones — while increasing the risk of cancer.

Concerned about earthquakes, the DOE decided the capsules needed to be moved. In the next year or so, the agencies will start transferring them to dry storage, Miller said.

Seven of the nine nuclear reactors are in interim safe storage.

The nine reactors presented a challenge, Miller said, because they had big footprints. Workers removed hazardous materials and demolished supporting infrastructure and facilities.

In addition to the reactors, nearly 2,000 contaminated buildings covered the Hanford Site. The agencies have demolished almost half of them.

The reactors were sealed off, also known as being "fully cocooned."

Crews demolished parts of the reactors, then encased the rest in giant steel structures. They will remain like this for at least 75 years, until radiation falls to a safe level and workers can dismantle the structures, though the method for full disposal isn't yet known.

One reactor still needs to be cocooned — scheduled to be completed by 2032 — while another will remain standing.

Reactor B is now a national monument that visitors can tour.

The B Reactor was the world's first full-scale plutonium production reactor. Instead of being cocooned, it was turned into a National Historic Landmark in 2008. Some areas are still radioactive but visitors don't have access to them, according to the tour's safety sheet.

As many as 15,000 people visit the National Historical Park at Hanford each year. Most visitors to the site don't need to wear dosimeters or other special equipment.

The former buffer zone is now called Hanford Reach and is home to dozens of species.

Instead of farmers and ranchers developing the land, it's been left untouched for over 75 years, and wildlife has boomed. In 2000, President Bill Clinton made the 195,000-acre area a National Monument.

Today, the Reach is an important habitat for the region's vegetation and wildlife.

There are herds of elk and mule deer. Chinook salmon breed in stretches of the river in autumn, and it's home to an abundance of birds, including burrowing owls, Swainson hawks, and sagebrush sparrows.

Not all animals are thriving, though. The agencies have found issues with radioactive wasp nests, fruit flies, and rabbits.

When radioactive rabbit droppings were found in the area, it was protocol to set traps to kill contaminated rabbits, The Seattle Times reported.

Recently, some populations, like the ground squirrels and burrowing owls, have been declining and specialists aren't sure why.

Adventure companies bring kayaking tourists by Hanford Reach on the Columbia River.

As for radiation on and in the river, health officials said fish tested for radiation posed no health risk.

Earlier this year, Hanford workers pumped out contaminated water nearby that threatened to leak into the river, according to the Tri-City Herald.

Though Hanford stopped producing plutonium decades ago, the surrounding areas continued to feel the effects of the nuclear waste.

In 2000, wildfires threatened the complex, and Washington's Department of Health reported a rise in plutonium levels in the area, thought to be spread by dust and ash.

Some Hanford workers say they have lung-related illnesses, like COPD or cancer, that they attributed to the time at the site, OPB News reported in 2016.

Radioactive tumbleweeds rolling across the site also caused issues in the early 2000s.

When affected Russian thistle decayed and broke from its roots, the radioactive tumbleweeds could roll for up to 4 miles and spread a year's dose of radiation, The Washington Post reported.

In 2017, a tunnel storing radioactive waste collapsed.

Hanford radiation experts said if it had been a windy day, radioactive particles could've blown around and made the situation much worse.

The DOE's own experts had warned the tunnels might collapse for decades, KING 5 reported in 2017. The EPA said more tunnels would collapse as the equipment deteriorated.

Hanford's 11,000 workers are still at risk.

In 2016, 61 employees were exposed to vapors from leaking tanks, two years after a report found a "causal link" between the vapors and lung and brain damage.

A 2021 Washington State Department of Commerce survey of over 1,000 current and former Hanford workers found that 57% had been exposed to hazardous materials.

This June, firefighters responded to a fire not far from the Hanford site.

The area is prone to wildfires and possible earthquakes.

The last big earthquake in the area was in 1936, but another sizable one could release radiation. That's what happened with the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011.

In the next five years, Hanford could start turning low-activity waste into glass.

Miller said Hanford is on track to start the vitrification process in the summer of 2025. Workers have already started making test glass.

But not all the waste will undergo vitrification. Instead, some will go through a different process, grouting, which makes the waste more like cement than glass. It's less expensive and quicker, but the method hasn't been as thoroughly tested as vitrification, Cascade PBS reported.

The grouting plans are part of a new Holistic Agreement between the EPA, DOE, and Washington State Department of Ecology.

While the agencies say the deadlines haven't changed, the agreement does update the Tri-Party Agreement.

Some stakeholders, like local tribes and environmental groups, said the agencies didn't include them in the meetings about the new plans, OPB News reported.

The Department of Energy wanted to dispose of all of the underground waste by 2052, but that's unlikely.

New estimates are closer to 2069 or later. In 2002, the Government Accountability Office estimated the price to clean up Hanford at between $300 billion and $640 billion. The office put the timeline at a vague "decades."

It's unclear how the next Trump administration will handle Hanford.

In March, President Joe Biden gave Hanford its highest cleanup budget yet, $3.05 billion. Things could change under the next administration.

During his first term, President Donald Trump proposed cutting Hanford's budget and floated the idea of reclassifying high-level waste as less dangerous to lower costs, per The Los Angeles Times.

Miller said less funding could ultimately make cleaning up Hanford longer and more expensive.

"Every year that Hanford cleanup is underfunded, that can actually push the ultimate lifespan of the project out further," he said. "It could actually balloon the cost by tens of billions of dollars if it's not funded appropriately now."

Environmentalists won't stop fighting for the cleanup, but they know the waste will long outlive them.

Tom Carpenter, executive director of the watchdog Hanford Challenge, told The Atlantic in 2018 that the majority of Hanford's waste was going nowhere. "Hanford is going to be a national sacrifice zone for hundreds of years," he said.

Sources used for this story include the Hanford Site, the Washington State Department of Ecology, the US Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Parks Service, the Atomic Heritage Foundation, the Government Accountability Office, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

This story was originally published on September 23, 2019, and updated on December 17, 2024.

The massive lasers will be installed in the startup’s future facility, which it is building in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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• Two Russian vessels were damaged during a heavy storm on Sunday, causing a massive oil spill.
• The tankers, both over 50 years old, carried nearly 9,000 metric tons of oil products.
• On Monday, the EU sanctioned 52 dark fleet ships.

A massive oil spill involving two Russian tankers is underscoring the dangers of the dark fleet of ships that's been boosting President Vladimir Putin's war chest.

On Sunday, the Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft 239 vessels were damaged during a heavy storm, discharging 3,700 tons of low-grade fuel oil into the Kerch Strait between the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and Russia.

Both ships are over 50 years old and were carrying nearly 9,000 metric tons of oil products in total, reported TASS state news agency.

One crewmember died, and 12 were rescued from the Volgoneft 212, which split in half. All 14 crew aboard the Volgoneft 239 were rescued.

Greenpeace Ukraine has warned of an "environmental catastrophe" in the Kerch Strait.

While the extent of damage depends on the product involved, the region already experienced "severe damage to the environment" in 2007 when 1,200 to 1,600 tons of oil was spilled," Greenpeace said.

Aging ships are transporting Russian energy

The problem is more than environmental.

The G7 imposed an oil price cap on Russian oil in December 2022, prompting Russia to grow its shadow network of mostly aging ships.

Using that shadow fleet of ships has helped Russia circumvent Western restrictions and allowed it to continue trading its oil at market prices, according to the European Union.

However, because many of those ships are old, they are also more prone to accidents. Should the ships not have adequate insurance, the burden of clean-up and salvage costs could fall on coastal countries.

Last month, 206 out of the 369 vessels that exported Russian crude oil and oil products were shadow tankers, according to the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think-tank.

About 30% of the shadow tankers carrying Russian oil were at least 20 years old, according to CREA. Major Western oil companies generally do not use ships above 15 years old.

Europe to step up checks on tanker insurance

The European Union is already cracking down on Russia's dark fleet.

On Monday, the EU sanctioned 52 dark fleet ships. That's in addition to the 27 ships it had previously sanctioned. These vessels will not be able to access EU ports and services.

"These ships have been found to be engaged in high-risk shipping practices when transporting Russian oil or petroleum products, in arms deliveries, grain theft, or supporting the Russian energy sector," the European Commission said in its announcement.

A group of European countries — including Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Sweden — is also planning to increase checks on the insurance coverage of tankers carrying Russian oil, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Bloomberg's sources said they expect no consequences for ships that are short on their coverage in the immediate term, although the information collected could help with the crafting of such measures in the future.

President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that he would withdraw the U.S. from a global climate change agreement when he assumes office — but a second withdrawal could look different from the first.

The Paris Climate Agreement was established at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in 2015 as a legally binding treaty between nearly 195 parties who are committed to international cooperation on climate change. The U.S. officially entered into the agreement under former President Barack Obama in 2016.

Under Article 28 of the treaty, parties are allowed to withdraw from the agreement, but no earlier than three years after they officially entered. Therefore, Trump was barred from immediately leaving the treaty when he first took office and the U.S. was not officially withdrawn until the end of 2020.

President Joe Biden, in one of his first orders as president, reinstated the U.S. to the climate agreement in 2021. Ahead of the presidential election, Trump told Politico that he would be in favor of withdrawing from the treaty a second time, and given that Biden withdrew at the beginning of his term, this could be accomplished at a much quicker pace. 

WHITE HOUSE SAYS TO ‘EXPECT MORE’ CLIMATE FUNDING BEFORE PRESIDENT BIDEN LEAVES OFFICE

"It would be a very different timeline now," David Waskow, director of the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, told Scientific American.

Max Boykoff, professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU Boulder, told the university's paper that re-exiting from the agreement could cause "a loss of trust" among world leaders. 

CLIMATE JUSTICE GROUP HAS DEEP TIES TO JUDGES, EXPERTS INVOLVED IN LITIGATION AMID CLAIMS OF IMPARTIALITY

Boykoff also suggested that a U.S. withdrawal could encourage other countries to also exit the treaty, as it was recently reported that Argentina's Libertarian President Javier Milei is considering it.

"The withdrawal may also cause other leaders, who have also expressed resistance to addressing climate policy as a priority in their own countries, to leave the agreement," Boykoff told CU Boulder Today.

However, those in favor of Trump releasing the U.S. from the agreement tell Fox News Digital that there would be many benefits to a second withdrawal. 

"The benefits of exiting the Paris climate agreement are many, first and foremost reclaiming U.S. sovereignty while respecting the rule of law," said H. Sterling Burnett, Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute.

"Paris encourages the U.S. to agree to emission reductions that are both unnecessary from a climate perspective, since we don't control the climate, but which do place substantial costs on Americans while putting the nation at a competitive and geopolitical disadvantage to China, which emits more than double the U.S. with no firm reduction commitments," he added.

Burnett also suggested that Trump submit the treaty to the Senate for advice and consent, which would require a two-thirds vote for the U.S. to rejoin the climate agreement — creating a potential hurdle for future administrations seeking to reenter the accord.

Also under consideration is whether the incoming president will withdraw from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty established in 1992 to prevent "dangerous human interference with the climate system."

Mandy Gunasekara, former EPA chief of staff during Trump's first term, suggested that the incoming president should not only withdraw from the treaty, but also exit UNFCCC, POLITICO E&E Reported.

Gunasekara said that the administration should get out of UNFCCC "if they’re looking for a more permanent response to getting out of bad deals for the American economy that do little to actually improve the environment."

Other leaders have suggested that the Paris Agreement itself could suffer in the future if the U.S. is not involved.

"The Paris Agreement can survive, but people sometimes can lose important organs or lose the legs and survive. But we don’t want a crippled Paris agreement. We want a real Paris agreement," Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, told the Guardian. "It’s very important that the United States remain in the Paris Agreement, and more than remain in the Paris agreement, that the United States adopts the kind of policies that are necessary to make the 1.5 degrees still a realistic objective."

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said China is the "greatest threat" to the United States and that President-elect Donald Trump will bring "peace through strength, not peace through appeasement." 

Gimenez, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital the CCP is the "adversary we have to watch, both militarily and economically." 

"China is making great strides around the world," Gimenez said, pointing to its capacity in production, specifically with defense materials and weapons. "It surpasses that of the United States’ and we have seen that we are lacking." 

NATO CHIEF URGES MEMBERS TO 'TURBOCHARGE' DEFENSE PRODUCTION AS HE PAINTS PICTURE OF A WORLD BOUND FOR WAR

Gimenez said the Russian-Ukraine war has "demonstrated to us that our defense capacity has been degraded over the decades."

"It shows we could run out of munitions fairly quickly if we had a prolonged fight with China," he said, warning that China also "has the ability to produce many more ships than we do." 

Gimenez said the U.S. is "trying to do catch-up." 

"We have to update how we do things at the Pentagon, we have to be more nimble, we have to get the private sector involved, and we have to eliminate bureaucracy that has hampered our ability to protect ourselves," he said. 

'BE AWARE': HOUSE LAWMAKERS DESCRIBE WHAT IT'S LIKE LIVING UNDER THREAT BY CHINA, IRAN

But as for the approach to the China threat, Gimenez blasted the Biden administration, specifically President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

"I think China, with Biden and Blinken, thought they could do just about anything they wanted or thought they could fool them," he said. "The Biden administration was always exhibiting weakness and trying to appease our enemies, whereas Trump knows exactly who our friends are, who our enemies are and is going to put the security of America first."

Gimenez added, "He understands that the security of America lies in peace through strength, not peace through appeasement."

As for confronting the threat in the coming months, Gimenez pointed to the importance of the U.S. being energy independent.

Gimenez said he wants to "make America the energy spigot of the world, where the world goes to get energy is America." 

TRUMP TAPS FORMER ACTING AG MATTHEW WHITAKER AS NATO AMBASSADOR

"It would help our financial situation, our balance sheet, and give us the ability to help our friends and weaken our enemies," he said.

"We could use our energy dominance as an economic weapon against our enemies, helping our friends and hurting our enemies," he continued. "We can substitute Iranian and Venezuelan oil with American oil, Russian oil with American oil, and then starve those countries which are allied with China of their greatest source of revenue and then impede their ability to help China."

"If China finds itself isolated in the world, I think that’s the best way we can contain this threat," he said. "But we have to project strength and the willingness to confront aggression by the CCP."

As for the House Select Committee on the CCP, he said they have "much more work to do." 

"The China threat is increasing," he said, noting that the committee is bipartisan in its nature and that members on both sides of the aisle have "bought into that China is the threat and that China will be the threat."

"It’s not climate change, it’s China," he said. "And we have to confront that threat or live in a world that is dominated by the Chinese Communist Party."

"And Trump is going to project strength and back those words with action."

The premier of a key region in Canada is threatening to cut off energy and critical mineral exports to the U.S. if President-elect Trump implements a sweeping tariff on all Canadian products. 

Trump recently threatened a 25% tariff on all Canadian and Mexican exports in an effort to stop the flow of illegal immigration and illicit drugs coming into the U.S.

Just days after Trump's announcement, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, said that he would consider retaliatory measures against the U.S. if the incoming president acted on his promise.

"We will go to the extent of cutting off their energy — going down to Michigan, going down to New York State and over to Wisconsin," Ford told reporters. 

TRUMP TAUNTS TRUDEAU WITH NEW TITLE AS HE CONTINUES TARIFFS PUSH: ‘GREAT STATE OF CANADA’

Although Ontario produces on a very small portion of Canada's oil, it is known for hydro electric and nuclear power.

The premier added that other officials in the country are reportedly identifying ways they can hurt U.S. exports if Trump enacts a tariff.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL ISSUE EXECUTIVE ORDER TO CHARGE CANADA, MEXICO 25% TARIFF ON GOODS UPON TAKING OFFICE

"Some premiers proactively identified products that their provinces produce and export to the United States and which the U.S. relies on, and which should be considered as part of the Canadian response. This included some critical minerals and metals," Ford said.

Canada was reportedly the largest source of U.S. energy imports in 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration. 

"Canadians get hurt, but I can assure you one thing: the Americans are going to feel the pain as well, and isn’t that unfortunate?" Ford said.

Ford is also reportedly considering barring American-made alcohol from being sold in Ontario. 

Ford, however, might not be able to unilaterally cut off the province's energy supply to the U.S., according to a Canadian political science professor.

"I do not believe Ontario could unilaterally stop electricity exports to the U.S. without Ottawa’s approval. Similarly, Michigan cannot unilaterally stop the flow of western Canadian natural gas to eastern Canada without Washington’s approval," University of Toronto political science Professor Nelson Wiseman told Now Toronto in response to Ford's retaliatory threat.

Trump responded to the threats, saying "that's okay if he does that."

"The United States is subsidizing Canada, and we shouldn't have to do that," Trump told CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. "And we have a great relationship. I have so many friends in Canada, but we shouldn't have to subsidize a country."

After Trump threatened a tariff on the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to West Palm Beach, Florida, to meet with the incoming president at Mar-a-Lago. Trump called it a "very productive meeting." 

A group of U.S. oil and gas producers is upping the pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to push through a major permitting reform bill, stressing in a letter Wednesday the urgency for the chamber to move swiftly on approving the legislation, which they see as crucial for attracting new investments in domestic oil and gas projects, bolstering national energy security and breathing new life into other long-stalled energy infrastructure projects.

The letter, authored by a coalition of U.S. oil and gas groups who represent a combined 80% of domestic fossil fuel production, stressed the need for House Republicans to swiftly and "immediately" pass the Energy Permitting Reform Act, or the 2024 bill authored by Sens. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., and John Barrasso, R-Wyo. They described that legislation as crucial to helping expedite actions for producers under the second Trump administration. 

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"While this bill is merely the first step towards comprehensive permitting reform in this country, we believe that passing the package now, at the end of the 118th, and then earnestly advancing additional National Environmental Policy Act reforms such as those being drafted by Chairman Westerman in the Natural Resources Committee, will ensure that America can get back on track as quickly as possible," the letter said.

Pressure on Johnson and House Republicans has mounted in recent days as lawmakers prepare for a final sprint before the end of the 118th session of Congress. Some have suggested the bill's best chances of passage are by paring it with NEPA reform — likely efforts championed by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., which could earn the permitting reform bill more buy-in from House Republicans.

Its signatories included more than half a dozen major oil and gas industry groups, including the Gulf Energy Alliance, the U.S. Oil & Gas Association, and the Independent Petroleum Association, among others.

In the letter, the groups pointed to an analysis from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that found that in 2000, it took an average of just two years for new U.S. energy infrastructure projects to go from being issued their first permit to becoming fully operational — a timeline, they noted, that has now extended to an average of more than five years for new projects.   

"Such delays discourage investment in these projects and threatens our energy security," they said. "Many projects take even longer or are ultimately canceled as funding is lost or companies simply give up."

LEAVE THE OIL TO ME: TRUMP VOWS TO UNLEASH US ENERGY, UNDO KEY BIDEN RULES IN 2ND TERM

"The Energy Permitting Reform Act must be treated as an urgent priority," National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito told Fox News Digital in a statement. "With the transition to a new Congress and administration looming, this legislation is crucial for establishing a strong national energy and permitting policy framework that will propel federal support for American offshore energy well into the future."

"By simplifying the permitting process, we can boost our domestic energy production while maintaining environmental safeguards," Milito said, adding, "These reforms reaffirm America's commitment to leading the world in energy production, economic prosperity, and environmental stewardship."In campaigning for president, Trump has vowed to "unleash" U.S. energy production, including oil and gas production, and to "frack, frack, frack."

President-elect Donald Trump blamed the Biden administration for what he views as recent failures in U.S. oil and gas production and used many of his campaign trail stump speeches to take aim at the administration for its outsize focus on electric vehicle manufacturing and production, as well as the shuttering of aging power plants and the spike in energy prices, which increased by as much as 50% in the Keystone State.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Speaker Johnson's office for comment on the letter. 

Multiple top Alaskan officials are expressing outrage at the way the Biden administration is orchestrating its final congressionally mandated leasing of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) Section 1002 land for fossil fuel exploration.

Both of Alaska's U.S. senators, the state’s governor and local officials in the remote communities nearest the North Slope refuge collectively expressed that the Department of Interior’s planned January sale was set up in bad faith.

"These leases should be executed in good faith along the established historical processes. And obviously, the Biden administration in the past four years has just been brutal on Alaska," said Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

"And, you know, they're in the twilight of their term here. But nonetheless, they're going to continue to double-down on denying Alaska opportunities, denying our people opportunities, denying America the opportunity to potentially get some more oil [exploration] going to the future."

AK GOV: BIDEN IS SEARCHING FOR OIL EVERYWHERE BUT AT HOME

Dunleavy added that, despite his top perch in Juneau, he remained unclear on exactly what the Biden administration sought to gain by treating Alaska as alleged while buying energy from America’s rivals and working to shepherd in alternative fuels.

"I think when we look back on this over time, there's going to be a lot of head-scratching as to what was the purpose of all this?" he said.

"I keep telling people the idea that nobody's going to want oil if you don't allow drilling in Alaska: it makes no sense."

For his part, Dunleavy has expressed an openness to pursuing alternative fuels, including the idea of harnessing tides in the Kenai Peninsula's Cook Inlet — the second-strongest in the world — to produce energy. 

The governor said that just as the Biden administration cancelled leases in ANWR-1002, President-elect Trump could nix those moves.

ALASKA GOV SAYS INLET TIDES THE NEXT RENEWABLE RESOURCE

"They defied the spirit of the law itself," he said. "So I look forward to January 20th."

Meanwhile, leaders in the Inupiat village of Kaktovik — the only community within ANWR-1002 — slammed the structure of the lease sale.

Green interests have long claimed local residents and Native communities oppose development on their lands, but in a statement to Fox News Digital, Inupiat leaders disagreed.

"The release of the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program Record of Decision by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has left the community of Kaktovik, Alaska… frustrated and discontented," a community representative said.

"The lands under question are the traditional lands of the Kaktovikmiut. However, it is apparent once again that outside, well-funded environmental groups have had the preferential voice during the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) process."

Local leaders accused the administration of siding with outside interests, rather than hearing from locals who may not see it their way.

"Kaktovik does not support this outcome nor condone the process by which it was reached," community leaders jointly said of the lease sale structure.

Edward Rexford, the Native village president, called it a "predetermined outcome," and that as a small tribal entity, they were not afforded adequate opportunity to participate in the impact statement process.

WESTERN NATIONS HAVE BOUGHT $2B IN RUSSIAN OIL THIS YEAR THROUGH SANCTIONS WORKAROUNDS

"The City of Kaktovik is outraged by this result," said Mayor Nathan Gordon, Jr.

Officials at the Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority (AIDEA) concurred, adding their analysis found the Biden administration's record-of-decision blocked "nearly all development of even a small part" of ANWR-1002.

"Sadly, the Biden administration continues to take illegal actions to stop all natural resource development in Alaska," said AIDEA executive director Randy Ruaro.

"Jobs from developing ANWR would offer high wages to Alaskans at a level that can keep families in-state."

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In a statement, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the sale is an "eleventh-hour" decision and "yet another charade aimed at subverting the will of Congress in the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act."

The Trump-era law was the policy that set the timeline and compelled the Biden administration to conduct the sale.

"It’s a fitting finale for an administration that has routinely allowed Iran, Venezuela and other adversaries to produce their resources, regardless of the consequences, while attempting to shut everything down in Alaska," added Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of the Interior and the White House for response to the collective criticism, but did not receive a response by press time.