energy
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Switching from coal to natural gas would accelerate climate change, say scientists
Here is a terrifying, crazy-making truth: Getting off coal will accelerate climate change, at least in the short term.
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The World Bank Still Can't Quit Dirty Coal
This column was co-written by Justin Guay of the Sierra Club International Program. As the New York Times recently reported, coal plants don’t come dirtier than the Soviet-era relics currently in operation in Kosovo. Despite the terrible pollution these plants spew, the World Bank has decided the only option for this young country is to […]
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Obama's Job: Protect Us from Pollution [video]
While Obama’s jobs speech is being framed as a turning point for his tenure as President, there is another job I would respectively suggest he concentrate on: his own. Here’s a quick video ad that I think gets right to point: Late last week the President blocked reforms to the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to […]
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In battle between fuel and food, food is losing worse than ever
Despite the backlash against ethanol in the U.S. and biodiesel in the E.U., global production of biofuels was up 17 percent in 2010. That's 27.7 billion gallons of liquid fuel for the year. (For reference, the U.S. uses 137 billion gallons of gasoline per year, though that's not directly equivalent because biofuels include biodiesel, and ethanol contains slightly less energy than regular gasoline.)
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Shining light on Obama’s tar sands pipeline decision
This week, President Obama will find hundreds more people in front of the White House – us included – willing to go to jail for peacefully protesting the President’s short-sighted decision to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama’s decision on this enormous fossil fuel project will not be a quiet deal with oil industry […]
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How to get paid to save the electrical grid
On the hottest days of the year, it's not uncommon for regional electricity systems to become so overloaded by demand that they come within a hair’s breadth of failing completely. (It happens in Texas all the time.)
Fortunately, utilities have come up with a cheap and easy way to overcome this problem: they offer their customers a cash incentive to sign up for a special kind of thermostat over which the utility has limited control. Then, when it gets nasty out, the utility can literally save the grid by turning up the temperature in your home just a teeny tiny bit. This is what's known as "demand response."
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Koch Industries lobbying puts over 100 million Americans in danger
Recent Greenpeace analysis of lobbying disclosure records reveals that since 2005, Koch Industries has hired more lobbyists than Dow and Dupont to fight legislation that could protect over 100 million Americans from what national security experts say is a catastrophic risk from the bulk storage of poison gasses at dangerous chemical facilities such as oil […]
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How to make a 100 percent energy-independent island
The Danish island of Samsoe is 100 percent energy self-sufficient, and even generates enough energy to export some back to the mainland. How’d they manage that? Well, it doesn’t hurt that there are only 4,000 people living on Samsoe, but the place is also bristling with turbines and sports a solar plant and three biomass […]
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Taste of things to come: Texas drought to shut down power plants
Hey, you know what's wild about Texas turning into a gigantic desert thanks to climate change? I mean besides the fact that this makes it basically Kuwait-on-the-Rio-Grande? Many of the state's power plants, which rely on fresh water to produce electricity, could be shut down by the lack of water.