Get Energy Smart! NOW!

In seeking to legislate paths to achieve a “clean economy”, one thing legislators do not lack are substantive and thoughtful roadmaps to look at and leverage. As per a post the other day, For decades, people have been working on and considering how to get Virginia on the path toward a clean energy future. And, […]

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Last week, a broad environmental coalition and multiple Virginia state legislators coalesced for the announcement of the “Virginia Clean Economy Act” (VCEA). When one sees organizations like CCAN and its climate hawk founder/director Mike Tidwell pushing hard to build momentum for the VCEA, the presumption has to be that this is serious action that would […]

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A decade ago, Google came out with its RE<C initiative. That formula: Renewable Energy less than Coal In short, an announced plan to invest to spark innovation and deployment of clean energy systems that would be less expensive than coal in traditional economic terms — without requiring inclusion of the substantial externality costs from exploiting […]

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Across societies, relatively small policy changes have led to real change.  Getting people off a lazy addiction to plastic bags (and thus reducing plastic impacts — from use of fossil fuels to produce them, to reduced litter on the streets, to reduced impacts on wildlife) is one example. Over a decade ago, the institution of […]

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This guest post comes from James Wells. When you think of “?growth”,? what comes to mind? Progress? Improvement? Prosperity? Is the concept of growth a pleasing one?For many people, it is all those things. But this pleasing image might pose a very serious problem, a mental and emotional obstacle to even considering whether traditional economic […]

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Analysis should enable more informed decision-making. Regrettably, economic and fiscal analyses too often occur in a stove-piped fashion that provides only limited perspectives as to real costs and benefits. Energy and environmental analysis, in particular, suffer from this problem. This has been true from the individual household to business to national policy level discussions where, almost, […]

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Guest Blogger J. Siegel has been doing a series of pieces on this blog (list below … latest here) on her work within her own master-metered condominium and, beyond that, on working to develop a community of master-metered communities to share lessons and seek leverage for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs to help them […]

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This guest post comes from James Wells who eloquently and passionately is outlining the detrimental implications of short-term thinking embrace of coal exports. The phrase, arriving in the middle of a deeply technical presentation, stood out for everything it said in just one sentence. “They’re just going to be rounded out of existence, because they […]

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This guest post from James Wells provides thinking about islanding and sustainability sparked by a trip to ‘the’ Islands. On the way to catch up with my family on the island, I met Kai, who was the last of the siblings gathering for the imminent end of their father’s voyage.  Although for the most difficult […]

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We’ve seen this clearly with Keystone XL pipeline. Proponents are letting us (all of U.S.) know that it will create 6500 … or 25,000 … or 100,000 … or over 1,000,000 jobs. In some ways, ‘just believe me’ type claims. The only independent analysis, to date, suggests that Keystone XL pipeline construction — even without […]

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