Day: February 4, 2019
Wave and Tidal Energy in 2015: Finally Emerging from the Labs
Technologies to harness wave and tidal power have been under development for over 40 years, but up until quite recently the center of technology development has been in Europe, where the resource intensity is greater than the United States’ coasts. However, in an effort to nurture the country’s…
Harvard’s Star Alumni Urge Week of Fossil Fuel Protests
Actress Natalie Portman, environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and other high-profile Harvard University alumni are calling for demonstrations to urge divestment from fossil fuels.
Renewable Energy Roundtable: Production and Investment Tax Policy to be a Top Priority in 2015
The renewable energy industry has come a long way in relatively little time. The costs of renewable technologies continue to go down, while renewable capacities at many utilities continue to go up. Although, in many cases, renewable technology is mature and ready for utility-scale deployment, state…
India Renewables Boom Aided by International Funds
India said cheaper credit along with foreign investment will help the world’s third-largest polluter fund an ambitious renewable energy program that would build green power plants faster than China.
Will Lower Oil Prices Dampen the Mining Industry’s Appetite for Renewables?
For many mining companies, the rallying cry for investigating solar or wind energy options has been that the price of oil and other conventional fuels is too high — and will almost certainly rise over time. Now, though, with oil prices having taken a dramatic nosedive, this argument no longer packs…
Reports Clash Over Concerns about the US EPA Clean Power Plan
Last year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed its aggressive Clean Power Plan (CPP), which calls to reduce carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030 over 2005 levels. States are required to submit reduction plans that can include increasing renewables, efficiency, and cap and trade…
2015: The Clean Economy’s Watershed Year?
In a crammed Washington conference room last week, speaker after speaker seemed to apologize for their ‘broken record’ talking points as Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy unveiled their annual Factbook. But, of course, they were only being honest — like…
Former FERC Chief Jon Wellinghoff Speaks Out on Grid Security and Distributed Generation
In a previous article, I had a conversation with former-CIA chief Jim Woolsey to discuss one of America’s greatest national security vulnerabilities, its power grid. The issues that Woolsey has been concerned with for over a decade has been the ease in which a terrorist group or other actor (think…
The Promise of Clean Energy Student Entrepreneurs
Cleantech investing has taken quite a hit in recent years. Last year, CBS News highlighted the “cleantech crash” on U.S. primetime television, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a Bloomberg-owned energy data firm, has tracked the multi-year decline in cleantech investing. However, there are…
Protecting Workers and Communities During the Clean Energy Transition
When I worked at the New York Attorney General's Office, we sued coal-fired power plants because their air pollution was making people sick. But in some towns, I saw that the reliance on coal really had people in a bind. The coal plant was making them sick, but it was also a major tax generator for…