CleanTechnica

Waiting for the Senate to move forward on climate and clean energy legislation seems like waiting for the Polar Express. A wide variety of parties from every corner of society seem to be getting anxious, though, and are pushing on Congress to get moving.

From rappers to Iraq veterans to the business community to the White House to winter sports communities to major Hollywood actors, people across the country are pushing for Congress to move in their own unique ways.

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In a simple step, using basic social-psychology, utilities could create a nearly immediate cut in electricity usage. And I think it could be a big one.

British conservative, David Cameron, explains the idea quickly speaking at a TED conference recently (10:53 into the speech). With a backround in sociology, I am immediately inclined to to dig into the idea a little further.

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Well, it’s the year of the Tiger, and TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) awards have just been unleashed. The TIGER grant program is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Through it, 51 innovative transportation projects from every corner of the country will receive $1.5 billion in funding.

US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced these Recovery Act or TIGER awards to states, tribal governments, cities, counties and transit agencies across the country just this week.

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Recovery Act stimulus funding for a technology that will make geothermal power available in every state is being invested in Senator Inhofe’s Oklahoma by the Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Program, in a $3 million R&D program to increase the volume of hot rock from which heat can be extracted.

Solutions will be found to:
1. Reduce costs for drilling and well completion and
2. Increase the volume of hot rock from which heat can be extracted.

The Recovery Act stimulus funds is providing $2,399,999 to the Oklahoma project, and a company from out of state;  Impact Technologies will put up the other $600,000 of the funding, and a patent-pending system for drilling and completing micro-holes into deep 300°C geothermal reservoir rocks. Read the rest of this entry »

FERC is close to approving the Tres Amigas high-voltage interconnection hub project in Clovis, New Mexico, designed to be the first step in a renewable energy transmission superhighway.

But five groups are filing against the project. The largest, Occidental Petroleum; is asking FERC to dump the project.

Occidental Petroleum’s main argument is that it would put local power companies selling higher-priced power to consumers at a disadvantage. They couldn’t compete with marketers buying at lower prices and routing their power through Tres Amigas.
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In a critical step to move international action on climate change forward, the United Nations (UN) just formed a climate financing taskforce. This high-level taskforce will be co-chaired by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The taskforce will investigate ways of raising $100 million per year, starting in 2020, to help poorer nations cut their emissions and cope with the effects of climate change.

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As California moves to implement cap and trade to reduce harmful greenhouse gases, the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy and the Environment has published a new study designed to help lawmakers in California fine-tune the legislation.

As with the studies by the German Marshall Fund with its Ten Insights from Europe on the EU Emissions Trading System – the UC Environmental Law Center studies those who have gone before us.

They want to fine-tune legislative ideas that can help us reduce greenhouse gases by holding polluters accountable, and by using the proceeds to implement clean and safe renewable energy that builds a prosperous economy in California.

One interesting finding is that the EU cap and trade system grew China’s clean energy. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, telling us something we should have learned in high school, a new study by researchers from the University of California shows why it is so difficult for the US to move forward on critical environmental issues.

The basics of it is that there is a severe misrepresentation of rural interests in the US political system. When you get into the details, you see how unbalanced this actually is and how this results in the US being an environmental laggard in the global community.

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The UK Climate Change Act, introduced in 2008, is now bearing fruit and thus providing the seeds for similar legislation in over a dozen other European countries.

Friends of the Earth and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been hosting a series of seminars in European embassies lately in order to explain the benefits of the UK Climate Change Act, which includes legally binding emission targets and carbon budgets which must be continued by successive governments.

They are looking to encourage similar or better legislation in other countries and it seems that a handful of countries are interested and tilling the soil for such legislation.

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It’s official. The EU trading system got carbon emissions down. It’s one thing when renewable energy writers on blogs like this say cap and trade has transformed Europe.

We regularly cover the huge wind and solar industries created there – the results of Europe’s early adoption of the Kyoto Accord and subsequent EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) and Europe’s resulting 13% greenhouse gas reduction.  We have covered the indirect results before (like how the US now gets hand-me-down clean energy technology from Europe).

But now it’s official. Cap and trade in Europe is a success. Reuters said it.

A study has found that although there were many problems in the first phase, they were overcome and did not hamper the scheme’s ultimate objective of reducing emissions. Cap and trade was not a failure, despite the problems. Read the rest of this entry »