The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "green energy" ...
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Green Energy Going Red
In this series of original and exclusive investigations, CBS documented the fate of $90 billion dollars in green energy stimulus tax spending and dug in to find out why it did not produced the promised results: a boom in green energy technology and products accompanied by a burst in employment. In Solar Scorching, we identified eleven green energy companies besides Solyndra that together got billions of tax dollars, only to declare bankruptcy or suffer other serious financial issues. Since our initial report, the number of failures has risen dramatically. CBS exposed the fact that the government secretly knew what a poor investment some of these companies were, even before it committed taxpayer billions. We obtained exclusive documents showing one project had confidentially been rated as a “junk bond,” but the government committed $43 million tax dollars anyway. It went bankrupt.
Tags: Taxes; green energy; Solyndra; taxpayers
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Solyndra Syndrome
In 2011, the Washington Post reported the facts about the Obama administration's green-energy focus. The promise of tens of thousands of new jobs to curb a near historic enemployment rate was unfufilled- the Post discovered that only 3,500 jobs had been created through a $38 billion energy-financing program.
Tags: Obama; Administration; Green Energy; Solyndra
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Green Energy: Contracts, Connections and the Collapse of Solyndra
Beginning in March, the Center's Ronnie Greene and ABC's Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross exposed flaws in the Department of Energy's billion-dollar spending spree, revealed deep links between Obama campaign bundlers and energy contracts and foreshadowed the financial and political storm that later engulfed Solyndra. Our reporting for "Green Energy: Contracts, Connections and the Collapse of Solyndra" broke ground before Solyndra's meltdown, and went well beyond the company in revealing a web of connections entangling a department lauded for its innovation. Working as full-reporting partners, our stories tied major Obama donors to lucrative green energy contracts for everything from electric cars to diesel substitutes. After over a year of reporting, we produced 50,000 words for the Center's website, thousands more on ABC's site and broadcasts on World News Tonight, Good Morning America and Nightline. Our stories, built from FOIA requests that yielded thousands of contract, financial and ethics documents, served as a template for national media reports that followed.
Tags: contracts; green energy; Obama; green energy; spending
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Green Grants: Tracking the Energy Stimulants
The 2009 stimulus bill created a program that was supposed to drive development of wind, solar and other renewable energy projects. But when reporter Anne C. Mulkern dug into the grants in lieu of tax credits effort, she uncovered that in many cases, federal money did little to stimulate new business investments.
Tags: stimulus; green power grants; taxpayer money; grants; green grants
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"Blown Away"
The reporter takes a look at how stimulus money is being spent. He focuses mainly on the money delegated for "green energy," specifically, a grant program that lets developers collect a percentage of their "investment costs" in cash.
Tags: green; energy; stimulus; money; wind; turbine; renewable; investment
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"The Climate Change Lobby"
Multinational lobbyists, particularly business interests in fossil fuel energy production, have backlashed against government's expanded interest in deterring climate change. As decisive action on global warming increasingly takes center stage, the climate change lobby over the past six years has increased in numbers by 400 percent. "The Climate Change Lobby" explores how special interests have attempted to sway environmental policy in a time of important decisions on global environmental and economic sustainability.
Tags: lobby; climate; energy; global warming; lobbyists; fuels; Copenhagen; Obama; special interests; manufacturing;
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Trash-to-Energy Proposal Trashed
A company named Green Power "proposed turning Cheyenne's trash to diesel through the process of catalytic depolymerization." The Austrian gentleman who owned the company, Michael Spitzauer, intended to "cure the shortage of diesel and America's dependence on foreign oil within a matter of years." But a background check revealed a criminal record in Austria, and a jail sentence for fraud. In addition, an expert noted that it is not possible for "a low-energy material such as trash to be turned into a high-energy product such as diesel fuel."
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It's Easy Being Green: George W. Bush doesn't get it yet. But renewable energy is no longer the stuff of noble visions and pipe dreams: It's available, inexpensive, and increasingly normal.
These three articles explore all of the various ways in which the US should implement renewable energy use. Through only minor changes, Americans could save a lot of energy. However, the government and big business have gotten in the way.
Tags: hybrid cars; conservation; Kyoto agreement; oil; wind energy; turbines; environment
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The Energy Crunch
San Francisco Chronicle follows the controversies surrounding the energy crisis in California over a 10-month period. The package of stories examines the political manipulations relating to the talks between the energy companies and the state and federal regulators. Some of the articles also look at how the energy deregulation approach has been applied in other states and with what results. One of the findings is that "despite the huge run-up in prices and revenues, only a handful of regulators today can say whether the energy wholesalers are engaged in brazenly illegal price-fixing, merely unethical market manipulation or just good business." The investigation exposes "the veil of official secrecy that allows the companies to bid on lucrative energy deals behind closed doors."
Tags: California Public Utilities Commission; San Diego Gas & Electric; Enron Corp.; consumers; taxpayers; wholesale costs; Pacific Gas and Electric Co.; bankruptcy; Edison; El Paso Natural Gas; Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; power plants; blackouts; electricity; Duke Energy Corp.; California Power Exchange; economy; business; market; SoCalGas; Mexico; Pennsylvania; Nevada; deregulation; nuclear power; coal; environment; Green Mountain Energy