Climate Climate & Energy

Making a market for solar in Eugene, Oregon

Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) offers to buy solar power produced by customers at 15 cents/kWh.

The weather will matter more and more

Energy dependence seems to be the topic of the day, or at least the last two days. David Roberts posted a link yesterday to an eye-opening article about the surge of interest among the Amish of Ohio for solar PV panels. I had always assumed, wrongly, that the Amish eschewed electricity, period. Actually, they just don't like depending on the outside world.

Meanwhile, renewed violence in Nigeria, a major petroleum producer, is giving oil markets the jitters.

So is home-produced energy always better?

Crap, another means of continuing business as usual failing to survive scrutiny

Important, albeit somewhat depressing, post about biofuels from algae on chemical engineer Robert Rapier's always excellent blog.

Here's his introduction to the article, which you should read in its entirety:

The Big Yapple

World’s mayors gather for climate-change summit in New York City Gone are the days when mayors chomped cigars and handed out keys to the city. Today’s civic leaders face a somewhat more monumental task: saving the planet. This week, mayors from more than 30 of the world’s biggest cities — from Bangkok to Berlin, Sydney […]

Contest in need of Grist readers and their funny

In a world without glaciers, what would you call Glacier National Park? Tongues firmly in cheeks, National Environmental Trust is sponsoring a contest to come up with a new name for the park. The winner gets a $250 gift certificate to REI, but really, it’s about calling attention to the fact that continued inaction on […]

Hey, that’s me!

Republicans for Environmental Protection have sponsored a TV ad on climate change to run in Austin this week. The goal is to drum up support for the several bills on climate change currently before the Texas Legislature.

Here it is:

There's also an article about the ad in the Austin-American Statesman here.

Just what every taxpayer wants

This is super, super smart: A Depression-era program to bring electricity to rural areas is using taxpayer money to provide billions of dollars in low-interest loans to build coal plants even as Congress seeks ways to limit greenhouse gas emissions. … The beneficiaries of the government’s largesse — the nation’s rural electric cooperatives — plan […]

Yeah or nay?

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) thinks it’s silly to use intelligence resources to assess the national security implications of climate change, or as he calls it, the “bugs and bunnies.” Meanwhile, Michael McConnell — the U.S. Director of National Intelligence — thinks it’s “entirely appropriate.” Who to trust?

Bigtime mayors and Bill Clinton meet about climate change

This C40 summit looks like a doozy. You could do worse than having Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg as your keynote speakers. If any Grist readers happen to be attending, get in touch. I’d love to hear how it goes. Speaking of Bloomberg, Worldchanging NYC has a whole series of posts on PlaNYC, Bloomberg’s plan […]

It could be fantastic, but nobody’s built any

CNET’s summary of its own story perfectly captures the highs and lows of solar thermal: Bottom line: A large-scale solar power plant with a large energy-storage system that is close to other solar-power systems and the customers they serve could produce electricity for about the same cost as that from standard utility plants. Such a […]