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Kentucky lawmakers demonstrate how to defend dirty coal subsidies

Cross-posted from Wonk Room. President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget would cut $2.28 billion in coal subsidies over the next decade. These $228 million-a-year cuts are dwarfed by the $545 million-a-year subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration technology, which Obama insists on calling “clean coal technology.” How are Kentucky lawmakers responding to this effective doubling of […]

Pulling carbon out of the air (and out of coal smokestacks) just might be possible

Admittedly, no one thinks clean coal is oxymoronic and misleading more than I do. That said, we do appear to be hell bent on funding carbon capture and sequestration systems for coal-fired power plants. The real problem with CCS, of course, isn’t so much the capture part as the sequestration part. What do you do […]

Alabama dump taking TVA’s spilled coal ash declares bankruptcy

The landfill in Perry County, Ala. that has been taking coal ash spilled from the failed waste pond at Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant has declared bankruptcy — a move that leaves a planned lawsuit to halt the dumping up in the air. Arrowhead Landfill owner Perry-Uniontown Ventures I LLC, also known as Perry County […]

Oscar smiles upon ‘Food, Inc.,’ stiffs ‘Mr. Fox’

Food, Inc., Robert Kenner’s hard-hitting exposé of the food industry, has snagged a Academy Award nomination in the “best documentary” category. (Full list of nominess here; Food Inc. is up against another food politics-themed film, The Cove.) This is a significant development. I know people in the food world who have taken a blase approach […]

Obama talks about ‘clean coal’ and solar during YouTube Q&A

During Monday’s YouTube Q&A session, President Obama was asked why he supports “clean coal” and nuclear power at the expense of cleaner forms of energy. A group of young activists from the Energy Action Coalition posed this question: “President Obama, record numbers of young people elected you in support of a clean energy future. If […]

Bill Gates thinks about energy innovation

Bill Gates has written on his blog that we need “innovation, not just insulation” in order to reduce CO2 to manageable levels. His motivation is robust, but his thinking is … far from clear. Because he’s Bill Gates, this is sure to attract attention, but even if he weren’t, this is worth talking about. It […]

Large-scale distributed energy is here: Recurrent Energy signs 50MW power purchase agreement

This morning, Recurrent Energy will announce that it has signed a power purchase agreement with Southern California Edison (SCE) for 50MW of solar. This might not seem like a big deal — California utilities seem to sign solar agreements every week these days — but there’s something special about this one. Recurrent’s power will not […]

What's the equivalent of 'slow food' and 'slow money' for democracy?

For years, environmentalists have been onto something with slow food and, more recently, patient capital. Each of these ideas has succeeded because they work at several levels.

Digging into Obama’s 2011 budget on energy and the environment

The Obama administration released its 2011 budget proposal today and the internets are choked with stories about it. The four biggest green stories are EPA funding, fossil-fuel defunding, nuke and clean energy spending, and the cap-and-trade placeholder. EPA regs are funded The EPA’s budget (PDF), which jumped up by 34 percent least year, will decline […]

Obama’s budget proposal serves up thin gruel for school lunch reform

Twenty of these won’t even get you an apple a day to keep the doctor away. As most readers of the Grist food section know by now, school lunches draw a meager share of the national budget. The federal government reimburses school cafeterias at a rate of up to $2.68 per student per day–a level […]