Articles by Adam Browning

Arizona passes renewable energy portfolio

On Monday, the Arizona Corporation Commission voted 3-1 to proceed with a plan to require Arizona utilities to procure 15% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2025. A couple of things to note:

1. 30% of the required renewable energy must come from distributed generation resources -- that is, energy generated on the customer side of the meter. This could provide support for up to 2,000 MW of solar, which is more, on a per-capita basis, then California's groundbreaking $3.2 billion, 3,000 MW solar initiative passed earlier this year.

2. The commissioners are all Republican.

There are still several procedural steps to get through before the proposed rule becomes final, but this was a significant hurdle. I've said it before and I will say it again: The most significant leadership on renewable energy and global warming issues is coming from the states, not the feds.

Press here and here.

World’s largest solar PV installation announced

This is big: 18 MW of solar photovoltaics to be installed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

And Nevada's Renewable Portfolio Standard, which requires solar as part of the state's electricity portfolio, is the driving force behind the development. In the absence of federal leadership (and yes, I am refering to the President's underwhelming and already broken promises in the SOTU address), states are leading the charge.

New solar funding is almost comically inadequate

As part of the SOTU hoopla, the Bush administration released some details of a major new initiative:

The President's Solar America Initiative.
The 2007 Budget will propose a new $148 million Solar America Initiative -- an increase of $65 million over FY06 -- to accelerate the development of semiconductor materials that convert sunlight directly to electricity. These solar photovoltaic "PV" cells can be used to deliver energy services to rural areas and can be incorporated directly into building materials, so that there can be future "zero energy" homes that produce more energy than they consume.

It strikes me as a bit of an Austin Powers "ONE MILLION DOLLARS" moment. The solar industry is unlikely to turn down the money, but let's face it: The total, not to mention the increase, is peanuts. It gets us back up to the level of R&D funding during the Carter Administration.

More to the point, what we need is not R&D, but deployment. California just passed a $3.2 billion program to put solar on 1 million rooftops in the next 11 years. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if you take seriously the fact that global warming has the potential to destroy the foundations on which our current way of life is built, and we need to seriously reduce carbon emissions now, then this remedy is so pathetically inadequate to the problem that it seems more like an insult.

And this is why they are going to hell

There are those that take money from others for personal gain. We call them crooks.

And then there are those that take money from oil companies, and in exchange do whatever they can to end the world as we know it. We call them the Bush administration. From today's New York Times:

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

...

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet." The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

...

The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing.

I would love to wait by the pearly gates with a camcorder. Won't they be surprised!