solar power
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Critical List: Emissions jumped in 2010; Japan has created the world’s most efficient solar cell
In 2010, greenhouse-gas emissions increased more than they ever had before in one year. Blame the tepid economic recovery. The EPA's going to release initial results from its fracking investigation next year, but the final report won't come out until 2014. Dig into the dysfunction of the Keystone XL approval process and the fighting between […]
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‘Going Boulder’ means voting for local energy self-reliance
Photo: Zane Selvans This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. By a razor-thin margin, Boulder, Colo., citizens gave the city a victory for energy self-reliance on Tuesday, approving two ballot measures to let the city form a municipal utility. If the city moves […]
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Solar cheaper than fossil fuels in a decade, says Steven Chu
Solar power will be cheaper than fossil fuels at some point between the end of this decade and 2026*, said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at the Washington Post's Smart Energy conference this morning. (For more on what Chu said, check out Guardian reporter Suzanne Goldenberg's tweets from the conference.) The date at which […]
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Republicans critical of Solyndra sought loan guarantees for coal, nuclear
There's ample evidence that pretty much everyone in Congress — even vocal critics of the government’s investment in Solyndra — is into loan guarantees for energy, whatever they tell the cameras after a few of these relatively risky ventures inevitably fail. Rep. John Boehner, for instance, requested loans to enrich uranium under the same loan […]
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Distributed solar power gets more affordable
Solar economies of scale seem to be improving as the U.S. market matures, opening the door for much more cost-competitive distributed solar power.
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Don’t let Solyndra fool you: Solar PV is on fire
This post was written by J. Matthew Roney, research associate for the Earth Policy Institute. Additional resources at www.earth-policy.org. Solar photovoltaic (PV) companies manufactured a record 24,000 megawatts (MW) of PV cells worldwide in 2010, more than doubling their 2009 output. Annual PV production has grown nearly 100-fold since 2000, when just 277 MW of […]
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Why ‘market-based’ is poor criteria for solar policy
The energy market isn’t as free as we’d like to believe.Photo: USDAThis post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. When it comes to solar policy in the U.S., there are three flavors: tax or cash incentives, long-term CLEAN Contracts, and solar renewable energy credit […]
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The Obama admin opens up the best lands in the west for solar development
The Obama administration is putting forward 285,000 acres of public land in the West as prime territory for solar development. About half of the land is in California; the rest is spread over five states, including Nevada and Utah. These sites, the administration says, have no looming environmental or cultural conflicts, and they're close to […]