Climate Climate & Energy

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  • Japan election a shot in the arm for climate talks

    The change in governments in Japan could make Yvo de Boer’s job of shepherding a new climate deal easier.World Economic Forum via Flickr“If we continue at this rate we are not going to make it,” concluded a grim-faced Yvo de Boer at the end of the latest session of international climate talks in Bonn last […]

    Geoffrey Lean Climate & Energy

  • Dominoes Keep Falling for Clean Coal Coalition

    Only a week after the nation’s third largest utility, Duke Energy, announced it was terminating its membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), citing disagreement over clean energy legislation, another company has followed suit. Alstom Power is joining Duke for similar reasons. From the NY Times/Greenwire article: Alstom Power, a French company […]

    Bruce Nilles Climate & Energy

  • 81-year-old Activist Leads Blockade, Courts Hear $85 Million Suit

    Big Coal giant and mountaintop removal king Massey Energy is getting stripmined of its “Friends of America” rhetoric, and charged for sponsoring job-taking, water-polluting and land-destroying operations. Hours after the West Virginia state Supreme Court considered new arguments in an $85 million damage suit brought against Massey Energy, 81-year-old paratrooper-trained veteran and Christian activist Roland […]

    Jeff Biggers Climate & Energy

  • Regulatory standards save money

    Business Week‘s September 14 issue reports: Second-Class Solar Panels? Sun-soaked New Orleans should be a great place for solar power. Yet according to TÜV Rheinland PTL, a testing lab, up to 30 percent of photovoltaic panels installed in such steamy areas of the U.S. are likely to fail in less time than the 25 years […]

    Peter B. Meyer Climate & Energy

  • Investment rushes into wind, but can we make it last?

    By Yael Borofsky and Jesse Jenkins, originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute “The money is coming back” That’s what Ethan Zindler, head of New Energy Finance Ltd., proclaimed to the Wall Street Journal in response to emerging evidence that the government’s $3 billion dollar cash grant renewable energy stimulus program is successfully incentivizing private investment […]

    Jesse Jenkins Climate & Energy

  • The Climate Post: When climate change leads to… m-u-u-u-u-u-r-der…

    Climate Post is away this week, trying to estimate sea-level rise from first-hand observation (or, at the beach…). Before life in Washington picks up again in the fall, why not take a step back and look at a way to organize the big picture? The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star recently asked us for an op-ed, reproduced […]

    Eric Roston Climate & Energy

  • Global warming, California, and wildfires

    The scientific literature paints a hellish future if we don’t quickly reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends (see “Climate change expected to sharply increase Western wildfire burn area — as much as 175% by the 2050s“). Even the watered down, consensus-based 2007 IPCC report acknowledged the danger: A warming climate encourages wildfires through a longer summer […]

    Joseph Romm Climate & Energy

  • China launches differentiated wind energy tariffs

    China has instituted a new system of differentiated wind energy tariffs based on four wind energy zones. The move is the first in Asia since South Korea implemented a feed-in tariff program in 2005. China now joins a growing list of developing countries with feed-in tariffs, including South Africa and Mongolia. China is also the […]

    Paul Gipe Climate & Energy

  • Enabling wind, sun to be our main power supplies

    As the world meets this December to set plans to halt global warming, it is expected America and other industrial nations will commit to a daunting task: reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050. In just 40 years, a complete revolution in how we use and supply our power must happen, or the world will face […]

    Craig Severance Climate & Energy

  • If you’re not worried about melting permafrost, you should be

    “If we lost just 1 percent of the carbon in permafrost today, we’d be close to a year’s contributions from industrial sources. I don’t think policymakers have woken up to this. It’s not in their risk assessments.” — Permafrost expert Chris Burn of Carleton Universiy

    Grist staff Climate & Energy