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James Bruggers

James Bruggers

Reporter, Southeast, National Environment Reporting Network

James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of Inside Climate News’ National Environment Reporting Network. He previously covered energy and the environment for Louisville’s Courier Journal, where he worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky in 1999, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California. Bruggers’ work has won numerous recognitions, including best beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Press Foundation’s Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting. He served on the board of directors of the SEJ for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Bruggers.

  • @jbruggers
  • [email protected]
California-based Fulcrum BioEnergy wants to turn trash and plastic into jet fuel at this former cement plant in Gary, Indiana. Credit: James Bruggers/Inside Climate News

Fulcrum Bioenergy, Aiming to Produce ‘Net-Zero’ Jet Fuel From Plastic Waste, Hits Heavy Turbulence

By James Bruggers

A climate activist holds a banner next to a plastic installation after marching to demand drastic reduction in global plastic production during the Break Free From Plastic Movement March ahead of the third meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi on November 11, 2023.

Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Flock to Plastics Treaty Talks as Scientists,  Environmentalists Seek Conflict of Interest Policies

By James Bruggers

A volunteer collects plastic waste that washed up on the shores and mangroves of Freedom Island to mark International Coastal Clean-up Day in September 2023 in Las Pinas, Metro Manila, Philippines. Credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

This Week in Nairobi, Nations Gather for a Third Round of Talks on an International Plastics Treaty, Focusing on Its Scope and Ambition

By James Bruggers

An excavator loads logs used for wood pellets at a sawmill.

Wood Pellet Giant Enviva Discloses a Financial Crisis

By James Bruggers

The ExxonMobil Baytown Complex in Baytown, Texas, at dusk. Credit: James Bruggers/Inside Climate News

The Missing Equations at ExxonMobil’s Advanced Recycling Operation

By James Bruggers

Jan Dell, founder of The Last Beach Cleanup and a chemical engineer, examines the contents of a large container of bagged plastics at a Houston Recycling Collaboration all-plastics recycling depository in the Houston community of Kingwood in September. Credit: James Bruggers/Inside Climate News

Dumped, Not Recycled? Electronic Tracking Raises Questions About Houston’s Drive to Repurpose a Full Range of Plastics

By James Bruggers

A surface mine in Floyd County, Kentucky, operated by a bankrupt company is shown here in 2021 unreclaimed. Kentucky state officials said reclamation efforts have since begun. Credit: The Courier-Journal.

Lawmakers Want Answers on Damage and Costs Linked to Idled ‘Zombie’ Coal Mines

By James Bruggers

In a new papal exhortation on climate change issued in advance of the upcoming U.N. climate talks in the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis challenged U.N. negotiators to strengthen the agreement they reached in Paris in 2015, to include “binding forms of energy transition that meet three conditions: that they be efficient, obligatory and readily monitored.” Credit: Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images.

Pope Francis: ‘Irresponsible’ Western Lifestyles Push the World to ‘the Breaking Point’ on Climate

By James Bruggers

In Whitesburg, Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear visits a house with flood damage in July 2022. Beshear was criticized after the flood for public comments that made him appear to not understand that fossil fuel emissions were making storms more potent, but his comments also conveyed a sense of empathy and compassion. “I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky,” the governor said at the time. Credit: Michael Swensen/Getty Images.

 Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Steers Clear of a Climate Agenda in His Bid to Fend Off a Mitch McConnell Protege

By James Bruggers

In Youngstown, Ohio, SOBE Thermal Energy Systems proposed using a zero or very low oxygen chemical process that would turn shredded tires into a gas that would be burned to produce steam for heating buildings. Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

Youngstown City Council Unanimously Votes Against an ‘Untested and Dangerous’ Tire Pyrolysis Plant

By James Bruggers

The prison fence at the Southeast State Correctional Complex in Floyd County, Kentucky, meets a road and open coal seam. Credit: Jill Frank

Q&A: From Coal to Prisons in Eastern Kentucky, and the Struggle for a ‘Just Transition’

By James Bruggers

SOBE Energy Solutions' site for its proposed tire pyrolysis chemical plant that would make synthetic gas to burn and produce steam for heating and cooling some downtown Youngstown, Ohio, buildings. Marketed as a green solution to waste and energy problems, critics view it as a source of unwanted toxic air emissions and a fire or explosion risk next to a large jail, student housing and other buildings. Credit: James Bruggers/Inside Climate News

In Youngstown, a Downtown Tire Pyrolysis Plant Is Called a ‘Recipe for Disaster’

By James Bruggers

A worker involved in making the first road constructed with plastic waste in Agartala, the capital city of India's northeastern state of Tripura, on Jan. 29, 2021. Credit Xinhua/Stringer via Getty Images

Experts Study Using Waste Plastic in Roads and More, but Find the Practice Isn’t Ready for Prime Time

By James Bruggers

The Nestor farm in Taylor County, where methane from a coal mine below is being vented in a tall white pipe next to the back porch. Mining dried up the farm's water well, which the Nestors used to water their cattle, a lawsuit claims. Credit: James Bruggers

Little Publicized but Treacherous, Methane From Coal Mines Upends the Lives of West Virginia Families

By James Bruggers

Kory Kistler, left, and Roy Bisnett, had environmental health and safety concerns at the Brightmark chemical recycling plant where they both worked until last year. Credit: James Bruggers

Inside Indiana’s ‘Advanced’ Plastics Recycling Plant: Dangerous Vapors, Oil Spills and Life-Threatening Fires 

By James Bruggers

The skyline is seen as the outerbands of Hurricane Irma start to reach Florida on Sept. 9, 2017 in Miami, Florida. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

How Are Hurricanes Connected to Climate Change?

By Amy Green, Bob Berwyn, James Bruggers

Jay Schabel, president of the plastics division at Brightmark, holds waste plastic from what he described as medical hip replacement parts at the company's new chemical recycling plant in northeast Indiana at the end of July. The plant is designed to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel, naphtha, and wax. Credit: James Bruggers

EPA Spurns Trump-Era Effort to Drop Clean-Air Protections For Plastic Waste Recycling

By James Bruggers

Ghana's Betty Osei Bonsu, representing the Green Africa Youth Organization, a nongovernmental group, will be attending next week’s U.N. negotiating session to develop a legally binding treaty to curb plastic pollution. Credit: World Wildlife Fund.

On the Eve of Plastics Treaty Talks, a Youth Advocate From Ghana Speaks Out: ‘We Need Urgent Action’

By James Bruggers

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