Tag Archives: renewables
Snake Oil
“Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,” predicted Lewis Strauss, Chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1954. The fusion power that inspired his comment remains only experimental to this day, and the best guess is that commercial fusion generation facilities will not be online before 2050. An [...]
Natural Gas Vehicles: Good for the Environment?
Last week, in a speech in Las Vegas, President Obama called for getting more natural gas vehicles (NGVs) on the road in the United States. NGV proponents applauded the speech and immediately reiterated the conventional wisdom that because natural gas burns cleaner than gasoline or diesel, NGVs lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions. However, recent [...]
What Will Low Natural Gas Prices Do To Renewables?
The sheer abundance of recently discovered natural gas resources in the U.S. could drive down gas and electricity prices in the next few decades, yield an overall increase in energy use, and stunt the nation’sstill-emerging renewable energy sector, a new report says. Using economic modeling, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that [...]
Facebook & Greenpeace “Like” Renewable Energy Together
Great News! Facebook, which reached over 750 million users in July, has started a partnership with Greenpeace to push renewable energy forward in its own operations, among its vast community and throughout the IT and utility industries. Facebook announced today that its goal is to power its operations, including its enormous data centers, with renewables and encourage other IT companies [...]
U.S. Support for Renewables: Borderline Pathetic
It’s time to ponder a rational comparison of historical U.S. energy incentives. In a thoughtful analysis called “What Would Jefferson Do?” authors Nancy Pfund and Ben Healey of DBL Investors offer some revealing insight to inform the debate. There is no free market in energy … and calls to action for renewables “to stand up [...]
Rick Perry: Time to Meet Reality
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s energy plan for the nation is deeply flawed on many different levels, as Climate Progress has already noted. One item that stands out among all the craziness is his ludicrous claim that the oil and gas industry has a perfect record of safe drilling as it has adopted the now widespread [...]
Germany: Doing Renewables Right
Forty-one years ago on Sesame Street, Kermit the frog sang a plaintive song, “It’s not easy being green.” In a gesture of solidarity, perhaps he should fax the lyrics to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government is suddenly discovering the costs of weaning itself off nuclear energy. In the wake of Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela [...]
Can the U.S Military Set the Bar for Renewables?
With Congress likely to cut federal spending on renewable energy and private funds still awaiting more market certainty, renewables might run out of support — but for a surprising benefactor, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). As detailed in the newly released From Barracks to the Battlefield: Clean Energy Innovation and America’s Armed Forces report [...]
Japan Wants to be the Leader in Renewables
Recently, Japan’s Parliament passed an aggressive national feed-in-tariff (FiT) for renewable energy, positioning itself as the next large growth market for renewable energy. The new energy law calls for 30,000 megawatts of renewable energy to be deployed over the next ten years. Feed-in-tariffs have been remarkably effective in accelerating renewable energy deployment, because they enable [...]