Climate Energy
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How one nerd zeroed out his energy bill with solar panels [VIDEO]
George Musser, a physics editor at Scientific American, has dreamed of powering his home with solar panels ever since he was a little boy. And now he does! In New Jersey, no less. His story is a part of Beyond the Light Switch, a totally rad documentary filmed by Detroit Public Television that criss-crosses the […]
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Why Congress will destroy America sooner than touch oil subsidies
In a far-reaching, data-driven, and damning feature for the Huffington Post, lead Washington correspondent Dan Froomkin explains why Obama has found it completely impossible to eliminate subsidies to oil companies. These subsidies amount to up to $90 billion over the next 10 years — that's $90 billion that will be shouldered by every other taxpayer […]
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Europe to turn Africans into fuel
After discovering the disastrous consequences of turning its own food crops into fuel, China has turned to cassava — mostly from southeast Asia — as a source for biofuels. Europe, meanwhile, is buying up tracts of "marginal land" in Africa in order to grow jatropha for biofuels. In the U.S., of course, it's corn for […]
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America’s energy use, in one nifty chart
Periodically, it’s nice to step back and get reacquainted with some energy basics. There’s no better way to do it than with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s famed (or oughtta be famed) energy flow charts. Here’s the most recent, from 2009 (click for larger version): Chart: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory I’m not going to ruin the […]
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Paul Ryan’s Big Oil budget halts energy innovation
Rep. Paul Ryan.Photo: Gage SkidmoreCross-posted from the Center for American Progress. House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposed fiscal year 2012 budget resolution is a backward-looking plan that would benefit Big Oil companies at the expense of middle-class Americans. It retains $40 billion in Big Oil tax loopholes while completely eliminating investments in the […]
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Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve?
We’ve known for a while that the cost of new nuclear power plants in this country has been soaring. Before 2007, price estimates of $4,000 per kilowatt for new U.S. nukes were common, but by Oct. 2007, Moody’s Investors Service report, “New Nuclear Generation in the United States,” concluded, “Moody’s believes the all-in cost of a nuclear generating […]
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The Congressional Carbon Circus
Photo: Thomas TotzCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. There’s lots going on in the center ring of the Congressional Carbon Circus today. Both the House and Senate are expected to vote this afternoon on bills to block the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job under the Clean Air Act to safeguard Americans from […]
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Me, talking about the Clean Energy Standard [VIDEO]
Last week, I sat down for an interview with EnergyNow about the Clean Energy Standard that Obama introduced during his State of the Union. Senate Energy Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) recently put out a white paper soliciting ideas for how the policy should be constructed. In the first […]
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Obama did not ‘promise’ to veto an EPA-blocking bill
Journalism is hard.Photo: Alex ProimosA few weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted through H.R. 1, their continuing appropriations act. It was full of tax cuts for the rich and slashed funding for the poor, elderly, and vulnerable — the usual GOP stuff. The White House released a statement [PDF] vowing to veto it: If […]
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Solar is contagious
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Adam Browning of Vote Solar wrote about a recent study of the peer pressure effect of solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption. The study [PDF] notes that for every 1 percent increase in the number of installations in […]
