Climate & Energy

Grading the states on net metering and interconnection standards

Freeing the grid 0
Posted 1 week ago By Adam Browning
The Kids Are Alright. Not So Sure About the Adults.

Kids just say no—to fossil fuels 0
Posted 1 week ago By Osha Gray Davidson See how one young activist is rallying his fellow teens to fight climate change -- and what happened when he took his message to D.C.
Toward a more perfect invisible hand

Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets 6
Posted 1 week ago By David Roberts As I said in my last post, taking energy efficiency in buildings seriously means expanding our policy horizons beyond the blunt tool of raising energy prices. We have to think in creative ways about how to remove market and behavioral failures that inhibit cost-effective responses to today's energy prices. How can we make efficiency markets more rational and robust? What follows is not intended to be comprehensive, just to call out some of the bigger challenges and a few interesting attempts to overcome them. There are folks out there who know much more about this than me -- I hope they'll comment or email me with things to add.
Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation 6
Posted 1 week ago By Michael A. Livermore This Friday is the deadline for public comments on the stricter vehicle efficiency standards from EPA and the Department of Transportation. The docket is likely to be overrun with statements for and against the regulation that would make cars and light trucks 30 percent more efficient in 5 years.
ROCKET, man

Copenhagen talks ready for take off: 5, 4, 3… 0
Posted 1 week ago By Geoffrey Lean Suddenly -- and just in the nick of time -- next month's Copenhagen climate conference is starting to gain momentum.
just another bill to pay

Treat energy efficiency like a utility 0
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago By Tom Laskawy Tom Laskawy says we should also make energy efficiency a "utility" like electricity, gas, or water.
A news digest of recent water stories

Bring on all the water news—the good, the bad and the ugly 0
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago By Daniel Moss It's not so unusual to see water stories topping the news these days. Even when that news is very bad, that's very good news indeed.
Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment? 0
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago By Tom Konrad In September, California's Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) released their Phase 2A report, which outlined potential transmission corridors to collect renewable energy from Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) that had been identified in previous phases. As part of Phase 2A, they also screened each CREZ for environmental impact, and the potential difficulty of obtaining land for renewable energy development.
Don't Miss Climate Change Ground Zero Showdown

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7 2
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago By Jeff Biggers On Dec. 7, the opening day of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Americans from around the country will converge for a historic protest at climate change ground zero for our nation -- the Appalachian coalfields.
hedging on a pledge

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets 4
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago By Jonathan Hiskes Provisional targets could let the Obama administration work around the Senate roadblock and bring pledges to Copenhagen, a top negotiator says.