Climate Climate & Energy
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How Energy Efficient is a Doublewide? (Not very)
Have you ever stopped to think about the energy efficiency of a doublewide? DOE is about to do just that, having initiated a rulemaking to develop mandatory standards for manufactured homes (basically a building code) under order from Congress to finish by 2011. I just drafted and submitted NRDC’s comments to the docket. Most people […]
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How the West is Winning Against Coal
There is so much good news coming out of the western U.S. these days on coal and clean energy. First up – another domino fell for the Blackstone Group. Blackstone had been funding the construction of three new coal-fired power plants in the U.S. (I’ve written about them before). Last month the River Hill plant […]
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LA Turns Lights on Deadly Coal, Bright Clean Energy Future
As I drive down the crowded LA freeway this evening, I will consider these facts: According to a fairly recent study, California’s costly dependence on faraway coal-fired plants in Arizona and Utah results in an estimated 67 million tons of global-warming carbon–“the global warming pollution emanating from these smokestacks is equivalent to the emissions […]
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Halting tropical deforestation is in the U.S. interest
Click to enlarge. “Want to Protect Farms and Ranches Here? Protect them there. Ending deforestation in the tropics isn’t just some tree-hugger’s cause.” Those are the opening lines of a new advertisement campaign run by the Ohio Corn Growers Association and Avoided Deforestation Partners which stresses the need to protect tropical forests in order to […]
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Without major capital investments, this generation of Americans will short change the next
From 1980 to 2007, total U.S. electricity consumption increased by a factor of 1.8, but total generation capacity increased by only 1.7 times. In other words, demand out-grew supply. For a while, that was fine — we had more toys than we needed, and real power prices declined for two decades as we made better […]
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Without affordable clean alternatives, South Africa turns to coal
South Africa’s finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, has an op ed in the Washington Post that illustrates the multi-faceted challenges facing developing nations as they struggle to provide the affordable access to modern energy needed to pull citizens out of poverty. The piece highlights the current tension between such objectives and simultaneous concerns about the environmental […]
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Tapping the power of energy efficiency
One of the fastest-growing states in the nation has the potential to save its residents billions of dollars over the next decade and a half and create thousands of new jobs to boot. How? By adopting several common-sense policies to save energy and investing more in clean-energy research. So concludes a new report focused on […]
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Dark Secret of World Water Day: Coal-Fired Plants Drink 1.5 Trillion Gallons
Here’s a sobering fact on World Water Day: Coal-fired power plants use approximately 1.5 trillion gallons of water a year in the US. In many respects, some folks might use more water flicking on their lights, than chugging back a glass of that wondrous stuff. Makes you wonder: Has the EPA ever tabulated the […]
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Revkin: "The idea that we're going to fix the climate change problem or solve global warming has alw
File this under “Self-fulfilling prophecy.” Below is an excerpt from the Friday Greenwire story (subs. req’d), “Treaty, regs won’t solve warming problems, former NYT reporter warns.” If the quotes are inaccurate or incomplete, the former lead climate reporter for the paper of record can clarify and/or expand upon his remarks here or at DotEarth: [UPDATE: Revkin’s initial […]
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Is Al Gore a good science communicator?
I wrote last year “the best climate reporter in the country is Al Gore, a former journalist, a brilliant synthesizer and communicator.” Who could have imagined that a film of him giving a PowerPoint presentation about climate science would be the 5th highest grossing documentary of all time in this country? Yet filmmaker/scientist Randy Olson wrote this month: […]