An energy-efficient Navy? Tanks, but no tanks.

What is the Republican take on global military strategy? A recent hearing offers a glimpse -- a hilarious, horrifying glimpse.

On Feb. 16, the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee held a hearing on the U.S. Navy's budget request for fiscal year 2013. I confess I did not have the fortitude to watch the entire two-and-a-half-hour affair, but CQ wrote up a summary that covers some of the lowlights.

The GOP's main objection, expressed by chairman J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), is that the Navy is accepting budget cuts in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan winding down. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus should be out in public, contradicting his commander in chief and objecting to the cuts, the Republicans believe.

It's time to stop playing around and get serious about funding wind energy.

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

With every passing day, Congress outdoes its own abysmal environmental record.

Even as federal policymakers consider a transportation bill that would open up sensitive areas for offshore drilling, encourage use of dirty oil shale, force a decision on the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline, and derail public investments in public transportation, they couldn’t even compromise on a simple short-term tax credit for wind energy.

Wind businesses were calling an extension of the credit an “emergency” due to looming mass layoffs in the industry. But as history has proven time and time again, if it’s clean and renewable, it doesn’t force any urgency in Congress.

This video of collapsing power plant cooling towers is supposed to make you want to celebrate the victory of renewable energy over large power companies that run on fossil fuels. And it does! Sort of. But the cooling towers are so adorable that you feel kind of bad for rooting against them. Couldn't they have put some cute moustaches on the turbines, too? 

Nice work on this one, Barack. (Photo by the White House.)

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget invests in clean energy to help power the engine of economic growth. The budget would direct funds to efficiency and renewable electricity technologies to create jobs and boost domestic manufacturing, and would also make manufacturing more efficient. The cleaner energy that will result from these investments will reduce pollution and protect public health. In addition, the budget would make taxes fairer by eliminating $40 billion in unnecessary breaks for big oil companies, which made record profits in 2011.

This clean energy vision would benefit middle-class Americans and the rest of the 99%. It is a stark contrast to the “drill, baby, drill” policies promoted by the American Petroleum Institute and other Big Oil allies.

Here are 11 important clean energy provisions in the president’s proposed 2013 budget:

If you're not already connected to an electricity grid, renewable energy is a no-brainer, argues Michigan professor of history and "scholar of the Muslim world" Juan Cole. For the one-third of the world's population that lives on less than a dollar a day, fossil fuels aren’t just environmentally unsustainable -- they’re financially unsustainable too.

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

Take a deep breath, because what I’m about to tell you may be shocking: Loan guarantees for energy have been successful, cost-effective investments.

That’s the message from Herb Allison, former national finance chairman for John McCain, who led a team of accountants and auditors in conducting an independent analysis of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program. Allison and his team found that, despite the hysteria around Solyndra, this program will cost $2 billion less than initially expected.

An MIT scientist has developed a quick and dirty way to harness solar power using "anything green, even grass clippings." So basically, solar panels made out of yard waste.

This technology is way, way, way, way below the efficiency of commercial solar panels: It converts 0.1 percent of solar energy into power. Commercial solar panels clock in around 10 to 15 percent; the most advanced lab models are pushing even higher.

But the simplicity of the design makes up for that shortcoming.

Photo by Tuey.

The roughnecks who straddle throbbing nacelles 150 feet in the air, one hand on a safety rope and the other gnarly with gearbox lubricant, are about to get the reality show (episode) they deserve, thanks to the Weather Channel. What happens when people stop being polite and start climbing around on giant, dangerous machinery?

I know football fans feel pretty strongly about doing things exactly the same way every time, lest their switch in underwear or beer brand or whatever be the butterfly's wing that leads to their favorite team tanking. So I have some bad news for you guys: there will be some changes this year. But take heart. Even if this makes your team lose, it's in the name of making Super Bowl XLVI the greenest one yet. 

Ali Al-Naimi. (Photo by Paradoxicalengineer.)

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

Americans use the term “Saudi Arabia of" to describe an abundance of something -- usually energy. We are the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” the “Saudi Arabia of coal,” the “Saudi Arabia of efficiency,” and so on and on and on.

I’ve come to jokingly use this term for anything really huge. (We are, after all, the Saudi Arabia of climate denial.) So in true American spirit, I am dubbing yesterday’s speech by Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi the Saudi Arabia of bold statements.

In a speech at the Middle East and North Africa energy conference in London on Monday, Al-Naimi -- who once called renewable energy a “nightmare” -- hailed energy efficiency and solar as important investments, called global warming “real” and “pressing,” and explained that drilling for oil “does not create many jobs.”