Sunlight falls almost anywhere, in every community.  So it would make sense for any number of people in that community to team up to harness the sun and make clean, local power. Sadly, it isn't as easy as it should be, as illustrated by the Vashon Community Solar Project in Washington State. The Vashon project is being organized by a local nonprofit called the Backbone Campaign, with a history of tackling tough issues.  But the unfortunate barriers to community-based solar are challenging even this dynamic nonprofit. The proposed project is a small commercial scale (50-66 kW) solar array located at …

I've been keeping my eye on the role of nanotechnology in food for a few years now, so I was interested to see a feature-length investigation called “Eating Nano” in this month’s E Magazine. In it, E editor Brita Belli takes a deep dive into the growing role of nanotechnology in food and agriculture, the current lack of oversight and regulations, and the growing consensus that more information and transparency are both sorely needed in relation to this growing field.

Nanotechnology involves the engineering and manipulation of particles at a nano scale. Nanoparticles, as they’re called, are measured in nanometers or billionths of one meter. Another way to put it: If a nanoparticle were the size of a football, a red blood cell would be the size of the field. Although some nanoparticles have been found to exist in nature (carbon nanoparticles exist in caramelized foods, for instance, and silverware has been shown to shed nano-sized silver particles), it’s the nanoparticles that are engineered in laboratories that have environmental health advocates concerned.

Here’s the thing: It turns out most materials start behaving differently at that size. According to the British corporate accountability organization As You Sow, which has been keeping tabs on the nanotech industry for several years, “materials reduced to the nanoscale either through engineered or natural processes can suddenly show very different properties compared to what they exhibit on a macroscale, enabling unique applications such as alterations in color, electrical conductance, or permeability.”

Considering the fact that nanoparticles are now used to help deliver nutrients, keep food fresh for longer, and act as thickening and coloring agents in processed foods, these “different properties” might be cause for concern. Or -- at the very least -- they might be reason enough to conduct thorough research into their health impacts.

As state regulators prepare to make a major decision on the future of a proposed Indiana coal plant with a $3.5 billion price tag, this week the Sierra Club and allies released a new poll and report showing that the public is strongly opposed to footing the bill for this over-budget boondoggle. Duke Energy is expecting its Indiana customers to pay for a new coal plant that's now $1.5 billion over-budget and will emit an estimated four million tons of climate-disrupting carbon pollution every year. The 618-megawatt Edwardsport, Indiana, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle Generating Facility (IGCC) is a $3.554 billion …

You may remember the tenure of Bill Johnson as CEO of Duke Energy. It was a halcyon time for the corporation, that one day in July before Johnson was ousted by Jim Rogers.

There were some people who thought it was kind of weird that Johnson should serve one day, "resign," and take home $44 million for his hard work. People like the North Carolina Utilities Commission, which has now demanded that Rogers take a hike, too.

From the Associated Press:

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers will step down as head of the largest U.S. electric utility by the end of 2013 as part of a settlement with the North Carolina utilities regulator that ends an investigation into the company's takeover of in-state rival Progress Energy. ...

Hours after the merger was completed July 2, Duke Energy's board ousted Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson, who was supposed to take over the combined company. It had promised to keep him in place throughout the 18-month process of merging the two Fortune 500 energy companies headquartered in North Carolina. The deal created the nation's largest electric company. …

While Duke Energy denied wrongdoing, the utilities commission said the settlement includes the company issuing a statement acknowledging it has "fallen short of the commission's understanding of Duke's obligations" as a regulated utility.

The important/good/interesting news for the people of North Carolina: Duke will also use $25 million in merger-related savings to lower rates as opposed to paying stockholders.

Who wants to talk about climate on a holiday, especially Thanksgiving, when the spirit is generous and food inviting? Not me, I don’t generally volunteer to discuss the matter outside of activist circles; who wants to be a wet blanket, especially on a holiday? It is noteworthy, then, that climate was a topic of conversation this year among friends and family, for reasons I think appropriate to the occasion. The political reverberations of Hurricane Sandy, a new spate of media attention to climate, Bill McKibben’s galvanizing “Do The Math”/ 350.org tour and the promise of quick Congressional action are hopeful …

Now that Obama has won reelection, he is freed up to follow his heart, moving forward forcefully in the fight against climate change. Put a piece of legislation in front of him, Congress, and he'll sign it.

Even, say, a piece of legislation exempting U.S. airlines from an E.U. carbon dioxide reduction plan.

The E.U. plan (which has already been postponed anyway) would have required that any airline doing business in its member countries participate in a cap-and-trade system. The U.S. Senate leapt into action, initiating a bill that would exempt U.S. airlines from the mandate (claiming, ludicrously, that it was because it sought more sweeping carbon reduction schemes). The House followed suit.

And now, our president has signed it. From The Hill:

President Obama has signed into law a bill that requires U.S. airlines to be excluded from European carbon emissions fees.

Environmentalists had framed the bill as the first test of the president's commitment to fighting climate change in his second term and urged him to veto it. Obama signed it over their objections, though the move was not publicized by the White House. …

In the seeming avalanche that is bad food news, it can be hard to know just how riled up to get about bacteria in meat. Yes, raw meat is a silent time-bomb, but then you cook the heck out of it, scrub your counters with bleach, and the problem is solved -- right?

On the surface this may seem to be the case, but what happens when those bacteria have mutated to resist antibiotics? Several studies, including one last January out of the University of Iowa, have found that such bacteria are widely present in grocery store pork. And now Consumer Reports has found similarly alarming results in nearly 200 samples of both pork chops and ground pork. In fact, like others, today’s study shows that more pork contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria than doesn’t.

Here is what the Senate is debating today. From NBC News:

Sportsmen might soon have more access to federal lands and be able to bring home as trophies 41 polar bears killed in Canada before the government started protecting the animals as a threatened species. …

The polar bear provision would allow the 41 hunters -- two from the home state of Montana Sen. Jon Tester, the Democratic sponsor of the bill -- who killed polar bears in Canada just before a 2008 ban on polar bear trophy imports took effect to bring the bears' bodies across the border. The hunters involved were not able to bring the trophies home before the Fish and Wildlife Services listed them as a threatened species. …

Tester said it would just allow a few people who have polar bear trophies stored in Canada to finally bring them home. "These polar bears are dead, they are in cold storage and we know exactly who they are," he said when the bill first came to the floor in September.

Does a Riverside County, CA, residential energy financing program put thousands of homeowners on a collision course with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)? In a proposed rule-making, the FHFA has suggested that Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) policies represent a threat to the safety and soundness of mortgages held by government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  PACE is a unique financing strategy that allows homes and businesses to invest in significant energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades and pay them back through a property tax assessment (for an explanation of PACE, see this PACE 101 slideshow).  The fight with FHFA …

During a campaign season in which climate change featured most prominently as a laugh line at the Republican National Convention, the low point was when CNN's Candy Crowley addressed "all you climate people" in her explanation of why climate didn't come up during the presidential debates. Who knew that human disruption of the global climate had become such a narrow, provincial concern?

But there's important information in the fact that a senior reporter for a major network could dismiss climate change as essentially a special interest issue. It's evidence, if more were needed, that "all us climate people" got our butts kicked in the battle for the narrative in the 2012 election.

And like the Republican Party, which is now undergoing the usual soul-searching that follows a big electoral defeat, those of us who believe that inaction on climate is the greatest threat facing our civilization (never mind the economy) have some serious soul-searching to do about our own defeat, which occurred long before any votes were counted.