When I helped Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger create the Million Solar Roofs Initiative in California a few years ago, we designed it to stimulate mass production of solar panels to bring down cost. What we didn’t anticipate was that the building industry would crater around the same time and that unemployed roofers and electricians would find new jobs installing those clean energy systems, which created competition and dramatically lower installation costs. In fact, about 60% of the cost of installing a rooftop solar powerplant is tied up in the American parts and labor other than the solar panels themselves. I emphasize …

A big Senate vote this week will determine the fate of mercury safeguards that continue to garner overwhelming support from Americans nationwide. This past weekend the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution (PDF) supporting the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) mercury pollution standards. This comes on the heels of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's letter to the EPA, signed by 91 of his fellow mayors, in support of these critical public health protections. Millions of Americans believe EPA is doing the right thing in requiring that coal companies clean up their act when it comes to mercury pollution. This week, …

There’s some good news in BP’s most recent Statistical Review of World Energy: in the US, total greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels fell 1.8% from 2010 to 2011. And in even better news, total US emissions have fallen by more than 7 percent from their 2005 peak. (Note that Barry Saxifrage recently spotted the same trends in data from the International Energy Agency.) But there’s also some really, really bad news. In fact, here’s the most frightening chart I’ve seen in weeks, created by Sightline pal Devin Porter, showing total climate-warming emissions from fossil fuels consumed in the US and China: Just as …

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When we last checked in with C40, the group of cities partnering to address climate issues, they'd just unveiled a fantastic presentation outlining ways in which urban areas could theoretically contribute to greenhouse gas reduction.

Today in Rio, they made that impact concrete. Now boasting 59 cities, the coalition made two announcements.

“To address the huge threat posed by global warming, I believe it is essential to move as quickly as possible away from natural gas towards renewable energy resources, and to not further develop shale gas unless major (and expensive) steps are taken to greatly reduce methane emissions.” -Cornell U. professor Robert Howarth, May 31, 2012, testifying before the House of Representatives

“On July 28th, 2012, we invite community members and organizations everywhere to join us in Washington, D.C. for a rally at the Capitol to demand no more drilling that harms public health, water, and air. . . Elected officials and public agencies must insist that the industry stop all drilling that is dirty and dangerous, and put communities and the environment first, starting by removing special exemptions and subsidies for the oil and gas industry. Join community leaders, celebrities and policymakers and add your voice to the call for a clean, fossil fuel free energy future.”
-Call to Action at http://www.stopthefrackattack.org

There are two energy-related issues that have generated significant popular movement over the past year: the movement in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and tar sands oil extraction, and the movement against hydraulic fracturing of deep-underground shale to extract natural gas.

The stop-the-pipeline movement won an historic temporary victory, with the final decision still to be made. The stop-fracking movement has also won victories, among them many-months-long fracking moratoriums still in place, but not permanent, in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and the Delaware River basin area. However, fracking is taking place in 20 or so other states.

Photo by Chris Johnson.

What are fish thinking when they change genders?

When Burt's Bees invited me to this press event, they probably didn't expect Isabella Rossellini to be the one asking questions, much less that one. Or for her to go on and note that gender assignation is largely a human construct. And to then express curiosity about what the process is like from the fish's perspective.

Sitting next to Rossellini, holding my notebook, I'm not really sure how to answer. After a pause, undeterred, she explains that fish are less interesting to play than insects because "sometimes they spawn, but that is it."

Luckily for her, we were there to talk about insects -- namely, bees -- and sitting with people who could answer the trickier questions she raised: for example, how scientists test for neonicotinoids, a pesticide that may impact bee navigation. ("Do they take the hives? … Do they feed them?" The answers were unknown.)

Rossellini has created an unusual niche for herself. Her series for the Sundance Channel, Green Porno, introduced Americans to the exotic, alarming mating rituals of flies, snails, and praying mantises -- with herself starring as each of the creatures. She enjoys the roles primarily because of the eccentricities of behavior, because of the tiny nuanced details that she likes to try and get right. And, clearly, because it is a topic about which she's deeply curious and fascinated to learn.

New Local Solar Policy, Not DeLorean, Moving U.S. to Cleaner Future

In the past five years, a new U.S. renewable energy policy has quietly grown more popular, enabling enough solar power (1.21 gigawatts!) to send Michael J. Fox “Back to the Future.”  CLEAN programs – Clean Local Energy Accessible Now – have been adopted in 14 states and can significantly increase the deployment of local solar power, says a new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR).

The 1.21 gigawatts of distributed solar power planned under CLEAN programs (also known as “feed-in tariffs”) represents one of the largest expansions of solar power in the country, without a focus on the largest scale projects.  CLEAN programs encourage rooftop and commercial-scale solar power located near where electricity is used.

“The rise of CLEAN programs is the answer to the question of capturing the economic benefits of clean energy development,” notes report author and ILSR senior researcher John Farrell.  “States and municipal utilities have created CLEAN programs to enable their citizens to become local energy and jobs producers.”

Read the Report

The report provides a list of the 17 operational CLEAN programs, from the tiny Farmers Electric Cooperative program in Iowa to the 500 megawatt statewide program in California, to the just-launched CLEAN programs in Los Angeles and Long Island, NY.  The report also explores the lessons learned from these early programs, so that policy makers looking to marry the energy and economic benefits of clean energy will be able to craft the most effective policy.

One of the big lessons is that state and local U.S. CLEAN programs begin to bring order to otherwise fragmented energy policy in the U.S.

“CLEAN is simple and comprehensive, unlike the hodge-podge of federal, state, and utility renewable energy incentives,” says Farrell.

“This local energy policy is getting us to a better future – and we don’t even need a time-traveling DeLorean.”

The report, U.S. CLEAN Programs: Where Are We Now? What Have We Learned? is available at ilsr.org

This post originally appeared on ILSR’s Energy Self-Reliant States blog.

A version of this article originally appeared on Earth Policy Institute.

World hydroelectric power generation has risen steadily by an average 3 percent annually over the past four decades. In 2011, at 3,500 billion kilowatt-hours, hydroelectricity accounted for roughly 16 percent of global electricity generation, almost all produced by the world’s 45,000-plus large dams. Today hydropower is generated in over 160 countries.

Four countries dominate the hydropower landscape: China, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Together they produce more than half of the world’s hydroelectricity.

What if I told you that governments around the world were spending almost $1 trillion dollars a year to subsidize activities that are driving global warming?  What if I told you that the leaders of the major countries had committed to phase-out these fossil fuel subsidies in 2009 but they hadn’t really done much to follow through on that commitment? What if I told you that countries had a chance to send a clear signal right now that it is time to finally phase-out these destructive subsidies?`  World leaders have a chance at Rio+20 to stop subsidizing fossil fuels to the tune of nearly $1 trillion and make an important dent in reducing global warming.  And now you have a chance to tell these world leaders that it is time to end fossil fuel subsidies.  Join with NRDC, 350.org, Avaaz.org, and other leading groups in telling world leaders that it is time to #endfossilfuelsubsidies.

Here is why this is so critical and why important progress can be made at Rio+20.

The new EPA air toxics standards, or “Boiler MACT” will tighten the pollution allowances for industrial (e.g., non-utility) coal boilers, and are widely and consistently being criticized as a threat to a still-fragile economy.  This criticism is coming from the usual corners (Inhofe, US Chamber of Commerce, etc.).  Meanwhile big-name engineering firms are turning out studies for affected industrials that say some variant of “you can install back end pollution controls that will reduce your fuel efficiency, you can switch your boiler to run on higher cost, cleaner fuels or you can shut down your manufacturing plant.” They’re all wrong.  …