Business & Finance Archives - Inside Climate News

A New Law Regulating the Cosmetics Industry Expands the FDA’s Power But Fails to Ban Toxic Chemicals in Beauty Products

By Victoria St. Martin — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act empowers the FDA to recall harmful cosmetics. Advocates want to know why manufacturers still don’t have to prove their products are safe before they’re sold to millions of consumers.

By Victoria St. Martin

Dereliction of Beauty: Second in a series on how lax regulation of beauty care products victimizes women of color.

A New Solar Water Heating System Goes Online as Its Developer Enters the US Market

By Dan Gearino — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 14:30:00 +0000

Solar thermal energy could be a “sleeping giant” in the push to reduce emissions from heating and cooling.

By Dan Gearino

From a distance, the energy system on top of a college residence hall in Omaha, Nebraska looks like photovoltaic panels.

As New York Officials Push Clean Hydrogen Project, Indigenous Nation Sees a Threat to Its Land

By Nicholas Kusnetz — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

The Tonawanda Seneca see the industrial development next door as a threat to the woods they depend on for game and medicines, and the failure of the company and permitting agencies to consult them as another assault on their treaty rights.

By Nicholas Kusnetz

When Chief Roger Hill speaks about the clean energy project going up along the border of the Tonawanda Indian Reservation, he turns quickly to the past. Hill’s Seneca ancestors once controlled a large territory across the rolling, wooded hills in what is now western New York, but most of their lands were taken through a series of treaties that shrank the reservation to its current size.

Corruption and Rights Abuses Are Flourishing in Lithium Mining Across Africa, a New Report Finds

By Katie Surma — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

The global clean energy transition could be a game changer for Africa, but exploitation of miners continues as many foreign mining companies ignore local opposition.

By Katie Surma

On a Sunday afternoon in March 2023, Darlington Vito was shot in the head outside an industrial lithium mine in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe.

Dominion’s Proposed Virginia Power Plant Casts Doubt on Its Commitments to Clean Energy

By Jake Bolster — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

The company has proposed building a natural gas facility in Chesterfield, Virginia, despite laws mandating it reach zero-emissions by 2045.

By Jake Bolster

In 2020, the Virginia Assembly passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, a law that required the state’s largest utility provider, Dominion Energy, to generate all of its power using only renewable energy by 2045.

Wood Pellet Giant Enviva Discloses a Financial Crisis

By James Bruggers — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 03:23:25 +0000

The company’s stock price plunged as its new interim CEO announced financial losses. Environmentalists had long questioned a business model they said was based on greenwashing.

By James Bruggers

A financial crisis has enveloped Enviva, the Maryland-based company that’s been harvesting large swaths of forest in the Southeast United States to make wood pellets for electricity production in the United Kingdom and Europe.

UAW Settles With Big 3 U.S. Automakers, Hoping to Organize EV Battery Plants

By Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

GM agreed to pay raises of 25 percent over five years, powered by hefty federal investments in EV manufacturing. The UAW’s president says the union refused “to pick between good jobs and green jobs.”

By Dan Gearino and Aydali Campa

The shift to electric vehicles is looking better today for U.S. auto workers than it did before a strike against the three major Detroit automakers, thanks to agreements that expand the reach of the United Auto Workers to include battery manufacturing plants.

Who Were the Worst of the Worst Climate Polluters in 2022?

By Phil McKenna — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 09:30:00 +0000

EPA’s annual greenhouse gas report for large emitters show some facilities slashed their emissions while others polluted more than ever.

By Phil McKenna

Emissions from the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the U.S. were down slightly in 2022, but thousands of industrial facilities with substantial emissions remain, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently released Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program data.

Watchdog Finds a US Chemical Plant Isn’t Reporting Emissions of Climate Super-Pollutants and Ozone-Depleting Substances to Federal Regulators

By Phil McKenna — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 13:46:14 +0000

Fenceline monitoring by the Environmental Investigation Agency furthers the call to close industry loopholes under an international environmental agreement.

By Phil McKenna

U.S. chemical manufacturer Honeywell International released chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—climate super-pollutants and ozone depleting substances that are banned except for limited uses under an international environmental agreement—according to a report released Oct. 10 by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non-profit environmental organization based in Washington, D.C.

Apple Goes a Step Too Far in Claiming a Carbon Neutral Product, a New Report Concludes

By Phil McKenna — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The maker of the iPhone is a leader in efforts to reduce the climate impact of its products, but a recent claim about its new line of Apple Watches may be “climate-wash,” a Chinese environmental research organization says.

By Phil McKenna

Apple’s recent announcement of its first-ever “carbon neutral” product was questioned in a new report by a Chinese environmental research organization that gathers and tracks data on greenhouse gas emissions from China’s manufacturing sector, which makes the majority of Apple products.