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Weirdly, while spending many pages detailing how the Energy Information Agency (EIA) failed to predict accurately fossil fuel trends, the report’s authors failed to highlight that the real-world performance of renewable energy (notably wind and solar) has greatly outperformed baseline forecasts. With the President’s call for more solar energy, highlighting that renewables have been doing so well (in price reductions and speed of market penetration) would seem something strongly support of Administration objectives rather than for something to be ignored in a 42-page White House report.

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Energy poverty is one of the world’s greatest challenges. There are billions of people without access to reliable and reasonably priced electricity. In India, alone, there are some 400 million people in energy poverty.  The new Indian government has set a major initiative to change this situation radically and rapidly: “to harness solar power to […]

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Today, there is an all day event at the White House on solar power, both announcing a series of initiatives and honoring “solar champions” from around the nation (full press release after the fold).  These champions are representative of leaders in technological change, drivers for policy change, and people working ‘in the grassroots’ to get […]

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The fundraising for the inaugural party for the incoming Virginia Governor, Democratic Terry McAuliffe, is seeing a serious lift due to donations from fossil-fuel dependent Corporations. Most notably, McAuliffe’s Inaugural Committee has received $25,000 from Alpha Natural Resources, an $8 billion coal company that gave $92,500 to Cuccinelli’s campaign. Dominion Resources, a Virginia-based coal, gas, […]

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At the Georgetown University climate speech, President Obama gave a tip-of-the-hat to the fossil fuel “disinvestment” campaign by commenting “invest, divest”. Convince those in power to reduce our carbon pollution. (Applause.) Push your own communities to adopt smarter practices. (Applause.) Invest. Divest.Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth. Today, […]

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The White House roof remains without solar electric panels despite Administration promises that this would have occurred well before now. While putting a few kilowatts (or even a few tens of kilowatts) of solar systems on the White House will have miniscule direct impact on the nation’s energy system, the symbolism remains important. With this […]

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The investment world is, well, truly a mess. To raise funds in the truly open market, companies have to have huge (HUGE) amounts of resources invested in lawyers, paperwork, and otherwise. This is important to reduce the chance for outright fraud (pyramid schemes) like in the 1000s of ‘make a million off this penny stock’ […]

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100 … 100 percent.  Such a ’round’ and definitive figure provides the basis for a very clear, simple target to think about. With all the delays toward action related to climate mitigation and the mounting impacts of climate disruption around the globe, the concept of 80 by 50 (80 percent reduction carbon emissions by 2050 […]

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Writ large, around the world, liquid fuel (generally diesel) has a relatively small role in providing electricity and thus the “oil” and “electricity” domains have a minimal overlap. There are, however, exceptions that are notable generally in being “islands”. These islands can be temporal (power supply disruption leading to use of generators while the electric […]

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One of the nation’s most important (and sadly too little discussed) intercollegiate competitions is nearing its conclusion in Washington, DC: the biennial Solar Decathlon.  19 University teams from around the globe are competing in 10 (hint, ‘decathlon) arenas to determine the overall winner. Lost amid, perhaps, the fanfare is that every single one of the […]

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