Climate Technology

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  • Weighing safety of weed killer in drinking water, EPA relies heavily on industry-backed studies

    Illustration by Lagan Sebert, Huffington Post Investigative Fund, EPA Image by Harry Hanbury, Crop Duster image courtesy Jenni Jone via FlickrCross-posted from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, […]

    Danielle Ivory Technology

  • California’s photovoltaic push

    Amid the hullabaloo over government-chartered mortgage giants derailing the green financing program known as Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, the march toward distributed generation of renewable energy — that is, generating electricity from decentralized sources such as rooftop solar panels or backyard wind turbines — continues. Case in point: The Sacramento Municipal Utility District […]

    Todd Woody Technology

  • Sure it’s hot, but here are six reasons not to hate the sun

    Spend a week on the sticky East Coast and it’s easy to go off on the sun. But stay cool. If we have any hope of beating our oil addiction, we need that Great Heat Machine in the Sky. Just last weekend, President Obama committed to $2 billion in loans to solar energy companies, including […]

    Randy Rieland Technology

  • Treasury Department hits PACE homeowners

    On Tuesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency effectively shut down an innovative green financing program called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, by restricting the ability of homeowners to take out loans to install solar panels and make other energy efficiency improvements. Now the United States Treasury Department has piled on. A new Treasury directive […]

    Todd Woody Technology

  • Holiday weekend brings good news — and bad — for clean energy

    The Fourth of July isn’t quite Earth Day but it’s becoming a favored holiday for companies and policymakers to declare energy independence, as was the case this past weekend. Cypress Semiconductor, kicked things off when T.J. Rodgers, the company’s chief executive, declared at a press conference that the Silicon Valley chipmaker would go completely off […]

    Todd Woody Technology

  • BP offshore oil board game: Seemed like a fun idea at the time?

    Back in the ’70s, BP decided to market a family board game by the name of “Offshore Oil Strike,” boasting the “thrills of drilling” as well as the “hazards and rewards.” I mean, Monopoly worked out pretty well for the Wall Street tycoons even in the midst of the Great Depression, right? On the other […]

    Ashley Braun Technology

  • Good News From the Past and the Dump

    In a week that saw more oil wash over Gulf of Mexico shores and more oil lobbying money wash over Congress – – both with predictable results – – I thought we could all use some good news and reasons to be hopeful. I found that inspiration on a trip to Germany and the UK […]

    Terry Tamminen Technology

  • The mystery BP Twitterer revealed!

    Leroy Stick is the brains behind a fake BP Twitter account called BPGlobalPR that’s racked up more than 180,000 followers. Need to Know‘s Erin Chapman grabbed an exclusive on-camera interview with him at the TEDxOilSpill conference. Stick (an alias) began feeding his updates to humor-starved news junkies on May 19 and — like the oil […]

    Grist staff Technology

  • 10 fresh ideas that can help set you free (from oil)

    With the Fourth of July approaching, let us pause and consider the words of that great patriot Sarah Palin: “Americans are not addicted to oil, Americans are addicted to freedom — the freedom to move freely and independently where and when we want.” Makes you want to go out and drive a Hummer in circles, […]

    Randy Rieland Technology

  • Feed the economy, or starve it? The answer’s clear.

    Photo: greenforall.orgIn economic-policy circles, a debate rages around what medicine might cure the ailing economy. The topic doesn’t draw much attention in environmental media, but I would argue that the direction of economic policy is at least as important as the hopelessly vexed question of energy policy. Before I get to the green implications, let’s […]

    Tom Philpott Technology