Making Headlines

E&E News: Energywire, 31-May-18

When FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. sought bankruptcy protection this spring, included in the avalanche of legal filings was a motion to exit a partnership that runs a pair of 1950s-era coal plants on the Ohio River. ... S.B. 155 and a companion House bill touting the plants as "national security generation resources" were introduced last May. Neither has been called for a vote. But the Senate bill has been the subject of more than a half-dozen hearings in the state Senate Public Utilities Committee. The most recent was in January, where the bill was panned by environmental, consumer groups, large energy users and rival generators. Ned Hill, an economist at Ohio State University, called the bill and decisions by PUCO to subsidize the OVEC plants "lemon socialism." ...

Forbes, 31-May-18

Imagine a world where “clean coal” was no longer rhetoric – a world where coal was not just low emission, but no emission. This seemingly far-fetched idea is to many, nothing more than science fiction. However, researchers at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio may be about to change that perception. ...

Business First, 30-May-18

AEP is funding research at Ohio State University aimed at protecting power grids from cyber attack. The Columbus-based energy giant has provided a $250,000 grant to support research on cyber-resilient power grids, work to make electric power distribution networks safer from cyber attacks. The research is being done by Ohio State's Electric Power Grid Research Group, led by J.K. Wang, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. ...

Christian Science Monitor, 30-May-18

...Efforts like these may be having an effect. People who work with farmers detect a growing acceptance that agriculture is at least partly to blame for Lake Erie’s woes. “They’re very concerned and want to do something,” says Robyn Wilson, a researcher at Ohio State University. “But they’re not convinced that the recommendations are feasible at the farm level, or that if enough farmers did it, it would solve the problem. So we’re kind of falling flat on the last piece of the puzzle.”   ...

Philadelphia Inquirer, 25-May-18

During a recent hearing on the role of innovation in addressing climate change, several Republicans made faulty claims about the climate, past and present. ...Santiago de la Peña, a researcher at Ohio State University who studies glacier dynamics, told us that, while he was there when Brooks and other politicians visited Antarctica in 2014, he did “not recall having said conversation” with Brooks. ...

WIRED, 24-May-18

Students at Ohio State turned this Chevy Camaro into a performance hybrid to win a Department of Energy competition. ECOCAR 3 IF YOU’RE LOOKING for attention, drive an American muscle car, like a Chevrolet Camaro. .…That co-driver is an engineering student from Ohio State University, who converted this Camaro to run on a battery as part of the US Department of Energy’s EcoCAR3 competition. This week, the team won first place, beating 15 other universities at the end of a grueling four-year competition to future-proof an iconic muscle car whose gas guzzling nature could soon render it obsolete. ...

Spaceflight News, 23-May-18

Ohio State University has done a significant progress in the recent past in the field of space science and technology. And now with it’s first-ever launch of satellite it is going out of this world. In the Monday morning the researchers of the university dealing with the mission successfully launched their first satellite into the space. The leader of the project Joel Johnson who is the professor and chair of electrical engineering (ECE) at Ohio State subjected the whole mission in highly fruitful ways and make it a success. ...

WOSU All Sides, 22-May-18

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has been trying for over a year to roll back multiple Obama-era policies including the storage of toxic waste produced by power plants. Many of his proposals have been met with litigation and lawsuits that have stalled the process. ...

WBNS-TV, 20-May-18

The Ohio State University is going out of this world. OSU launched its first satellite into space on Monday morning. The Antares rocket launched the satellite and supplies at 4:44 a.m. from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. The supply ship is headed to the International Space Station. ALSO: WOSU: Ohio State Research Satellite Blasts Into Space     ...

Salon, 17-May-18

We blame a lot on global warming — but science might not be ready to indict it for tummy troubles ...Bailey also pointed me to research by a team at Ohio State University, which found that climate change in the Arctic and just south — back around Nunatsiavut in Canada — may be increasing a plant chemical that thwarts leaf-eating moose from getting the energy they need. The team, however, is testing a hypothesis that something in the moose’s microbiome is allowing it to resist or degrade that chemical and thrive, despite the material change to their diet. To my shock, these studies seemed relatively hopeful. Maybe if the moose’s four-part stomach could adapt, so could my relatively simple one.   ...