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David Hess, Longtime Pennsylvania Environmental Official Turned Blogger, Reflects on His Career and the Rise of Fracking
As secretary of environmental protection, Hess flipped the switch on Pennsylvania’s first commercial wind farm and helped avert a catastrophe at Quecreek mine. Now, his blog is essential reading for lawmakers, executives and activists on either side of the state’s fracking divide.
By Jake Bolster
In July 2002, 18 miners working at the Quecreek mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, entered a chamber 240 feet below ground and accidentally broke through the wall of an abandoned, flooded mine, unleashing millions of gallons of trapped water.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
State of Play
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.