energy policy
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Surprise! Koch-funded anti-Solyndra ad is ‘mostly false’
Here's an anti-Solyndra ad put out by Americans For Prosperity. It is wrong. And it's been viewed 1 million times on YouTube alone, not to mention millions more on television. Which just goes to show you that if you give the people what they want, they will eat it up like delicious candied bacon, because […]
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Cap-and-trade program fuels economic growth in Northeast
Cross-posted from Climate Progress. A new report finds that America’s first mandatory, market-based carbon cap-and-trade system added $1.6 billion in value to the economies of participating states, set the stage for $1.1 billion in ratepayer savings, and created 16,000 jobs in its first three years of implementation. Says Susan Tierney, managing principal at the Analysis […]
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Has government spending on energy research been a waste?
Cross-posted from the Council on Foreign Relations. Steve Mufson had a piece in the Washington Post Outlook section this past weekend suggesting that the $172 billion that the U.S. government has spent on early stage energy research since 1961 has largely been a waste. (I say “suggesting” rather than “arguing” because Mufson doesn’t quite make […]
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Romney is recycling all of Bush’s EPA-hating energy advisors
Political windsock Mitt Romney has no opinions of his own about energy, so he's hired a bunch of people to tell him what to think about it, reports Politico. And almost all of those people are former Bush Jr. employees. Already on board the Romney train are Jim Connaughton, who ran Bush’s White House Council […]
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Krugman: Only politics can delay energy transformation
Cross-posted from Climate Progress. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman had another good column in The New York Times yesterday, “Here Comes the Sun.” He makes three key points. First, solar is rapidly coming down the cost curve — I’ve sprinkled a couple of the Climate Progress charts on this throughout this post. Second, fracking is […]
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Each American consumes as much energy as a 40-ton dinosaur
Yesterday, at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, where retired petroleum geologists talk about how we're all going to end up like Viggo Mortensen's character in The Road, emeritus professor William Catton pointed out that every American uses so much fossil fuel energy that if it were […]
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Jon Huntsman’s energy plan shoots blanks
Jon Huntsman.Photo: Gage SkidmoreCross-posted from Climate Progress. Presidential candidate, former ambassador to China, and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman received attention for his willingness to accept scientists’ verdict that carbon dioxide and other pollutants generated by humans are responsible for climate change. While 98 of 100 climate scientists agree that global warming is real, he […]
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Did Germany screw the planet by deep-sixing its nuclear plants?
Germany’s phaseout of nuclear power was a boneheaded move that has wreaked havoc with its power grid and cost consumers dearly, and it will hurt the planet by leading to more coal-fired power, says a feature by Aaron Wiener in The New Republic. But wait, says Grist’s own David Roberts! Germany did no such thing! […]
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Is solar Britain’s new sunset industry?
Photo: doggy SchnauzerGovernment treasury departments don’t generally respond well to the idea that the environment matters, and here in the U.K. things are no different. Yesterday, Energy Minister Greg Barker announced proposals for a 50 percent reduction of the “feed-in tariff” — a program that guarantees homeowners an income for the power they produce from […]
