Climate Technology

How to green your investments

This little piggy went earn, earn, earn all the way home. Photo: iStockphoto If you’re thinking green capitalism is one of the most powerful environmental forces in the world, you’re right on the money. Today, surprising as it may seem, some of the world’s leading financial institutions and biggest corporations are taking earth-positive actions — […]

Why did the guru cancel six coal plants?

One of the biggest climate stories of 2007 never made it to the business pages. It's about how Warren Buffett, with no fanfare, quietly walked away from coal, cancelling six proposed plants.

Warren Buffet.

Buffett used to love coal. His involvement with it began when Berkshire Hathaway bought MidAmerican Energy Holdings in 1999. MidAmerican was a big operator of coal plants, and with natural gas prices edging toward a huge leap upwards -- bringing coal back into favor -- it appeared to be a typically savvy Buffett move.

In 2006, Buffett picked up another utility, PacifiCorp, which includes Rocky Mountain Power and operates in Calif., Idaho, Ore., Utah, Wash., and Wyo. Again, it seemed like a smart play, bringing MidAmerican's expertise with building and running coal plants to a region of the country with lots of coal. Sure enough, in the fall of 2006, PacifiCorp presented regulators with plans [PDF] for six (or, in some scenarios, seven) coal plants in Utah and Wyo. over the next 12-year time period, representing approximately 3,000 megawatts of new capacity.

Taking care of rural coal workers

This WSJ piece on the battle over coal in rural (and important electoral swing) states is frustrating. On one hand, you have enviros, characterized as urbanites concerned exclusively with global warming. On the other hand, you have rural residents, characterized as concerned exclusively with keeping their mining jobs. Why is there no mention of the […]

Ausra

Via Deathridesahorse, here’s a video of Ausra (“utility-scale solar power”) CEO David Mills explaining Ausra’s solar thermal technology:

A long-term extension of the solar investment tax credit is vital

Joe is correct to point out that solar energy is not a monolith -- but he's got the categories wrong. The relevant division is not between technologies but markets.

Market No. 1 is distributed generation solar -- that is, solar sited on the customer side of the meter, serving on-site load. Think rooftops. This market will be served almost exclusively by photovoltaics (for electricity -- hot water is another case) -- and the relevant cost comparison is the retail price of electricity, not wholesale generation values.

Market No. 2 is utility-scale solar -- that is, central station generation for wholesale power. Think big plants in the desert that sell electricity to utilities for further distribution and sale to their customers. The relevant cost comparison is the future price of non-renewable alternatives, such as coal. This market will be served by many different technologies, including solar thermal electric (from parabolic troughs to power towers) to concentrated photovoltaic to dish Stirling engines to thin film solar of various flavors.

Coca-Cola and McD’s top brands among teens, study says

Photo: Taneli Mielikäinen There has been a lot of great work in the last decade to wake kids up to alternatives to industrial food. Here and there, farm-to-school programs have been launched, soft drinks banished from cafeterias, books like Eric Schlosser’s Chew on This have emerged. Yet clearly, much more work needs to be done. […]

Succeeding in the free market

One of my favorite writers, Jonathan Chait, has an article in The New Republic on “the latest in global warming denialism” (the latest being acknowledging it exists but refusing to do anything about it). It mostly goes over familiar ground, but I wanted to call out one part where Chait makes an unwarranted concession. Discussing […]

Cheap clean coal now dirty, expensive

The WSJ energy blog points out that skyrocketing demand for coal in the developing world is rapidly driving up the commodity price. (And WSJ proper points out that rising prices for coal mean rising prices for steel.) Meanwhile, Reuters says “clean coal” is “elusive” and the head of one of Australia’s biggest energy companies — […]

MoJo uncovers the eco-spies

Mother Jones has a blockbuster scoop today on the private security firm that spied on green groups on behalf of corporate clients: A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting […]

World Bank should get out of carbon-offset market, says report

Carbon-offset dealings by the World Bank have been criticized (and not for the first time) in a report released Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies. In the past two years, the report charges, the bank has loaned $1.5 billion to fossil-fuel companies to make minor greenhouse-gas reductions. It then sells carbon credits for those […]