It's a scheme that turns the traditional business model on its head: power companies can make more money by selling less power. Under "decoupling" plans, state regulators give incentive payments to electric utilities that encourage energy efficiency by their customers. "Before there was almost a disincentive to go hard at efficiency because we weren't recovering our fixed costs" such as plants and equipment, says a rep for Idaho Power. "Now the anticipation is that we will recover our fixed cost." Decoupling plans also reduce the need for costly new power plants -- a boon for both utilities and the planet. …

An ever-greener and ever-more-caffeinated world is boosting the fair-trade market -- not just for coffee, but for products such as cocoa, cotton, tea, pineapples, and flowers. The certification, which holds growers to strict standards per child labor, pesticide use, recycling, and more, is not a phenomenon specific to hippie shops: all Dunkin' Donuts in the U.S. and all McDonald's in England sell fair-trade coffee. Starbucks is also a big buyer, while Sam's Club just converted its private label of ground coffee to fair trade. It's still a niche market: in 2006, only 3.3 percent of coffee sold in the U.S. …

I keep meaning to link to The New Republic's thoughtful profile of Fred Krupp, head honcho at Environmental Defense: Krupp, of all environmentalists, has been the most successful in persuading the corporate world--and those who support its interests--to embrace the green cause. Among his accomplishments, Krupp has helped convince McDonald's to abandon Styrofoam for paper, Wal-Mart to stock energy- efficient light bulbs, Duke Energy to invest in wind power, and Federal Express to use hybrid trucks. He was one of the main architects of the Kyoto Protocol and is a linchpin in Mayor Mike Bloomberg's GreeNYC plan. In January, he …

It's rare for any environmental book to receive the attention garnered by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger's Break Through, particularly outside the usual green circles. Anything that prompts conversation on these issues is, in and of itself, a good thing. So one hesitates to point out that beneath all the hype -- the "death" of this, the "fundamental break" from that -- the book's arguments are fairly modest. Banal even. The word from the "bad boys of environmentalism" is that environmentalists should be more positive and support greater public investment in clean energy technology. Well ... OK. The argument about …

Recently Nordhaus and Shellenberger (N&S) posted on Gristmill, wrote in The New Republic, and published a book, all with the aim of offering a better alternative to the mainstream environmental agenda. In my estimation, they made three important points: Americans would respond to a positive vision of the future; global warming can only be solved if, in addition to regulatory policies, we embark on a program of public investment; and the public is quite open to the idea of public investment. Unfortunately, they didn't do much with that great start. I think I know why: the central thrust of the …

At current levels of around $80 per barrel, oil prices have leapt nearly eightfold since 1998. Many observers would have predicted economic disaster from such a leap, but the global economy just keeps chugging along. An interesting article in Saturday's Wall Street Journal reports that many analysts figure that $100/barrel oil is on the way -- and that the global economy will shrug that off, too. I was working in Mexico as a finance reporter in 1998-99, and wrote some about the first stages of the oil rally. Back then, most analysts seemed to figure that oil would settle around …

The following is a guest essay from Peter Montague, executive director of the Environmental Research Foundation. ----- The long-awaited and much-advertised "nuclear renaissance" actually got under way this week. NRG Energy, a New Jersey company recently emerged from bankruptcy, applied for a license to build two new nuclear power plants at an existing facility in Bay City, Texas -- the first formal application for such a license in 30 years. NRG Energy has no experience building nuclear power plants but they are confident the U.S. government will assure their success. "The whole reason we started down this path was the …

A new TV commercial on energy and the environment debuts this weekend. The swooping camera shots of glaciers and freeways will be familiar, but the voice-over may not: "Our lives demand oil." Yes, the 2.5-minute spot, airing in eight languages around the globe, is an effort by Chevron to urge humanity to seek out alternative energy -- while continuing to cling to fossil fuels. Aimed at people who neither love nor hate oil companies, the ad states outright that Chevron is "not corporate titans" -- it's people just like you. And you really, really want to keep your convenient gas …

The following is a guest essay from David Hawkins, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ----- Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are two passionate but confused individuals. They lambaste "environmentalists" for being fixated with a "pollution paradigm" that operates by "limiting human power" and by "increasing the cost of dirty energy." This approach, they argue, will not solve global warming. What is really needed is a five to ten-fold increase in government expenditures on "breakthrough" energy technologies. While their opinions are strong, their grasp of the facts is not. Unquestionably, we need to shift from …

Joe Lieberman says that comprehensive climate legislation in the Senate is more likely this session than people think (sub. rqd.), and that debate will probably get underway later this year or early next. But the reason he gives isn't exactly comforting: The Connecticut independent said U.S. industry has shifted on the global warming debate and is ready for regulation. "They want the rules of the road to be set by a Congress with the current political makeup," he said. "And they want the rules of the road to be set by an administration that is viewed as a friend of …