CleanTechnica

In a time when most states are hurting, Massachusetts has come out a winner, actually earning money to provide clean energy jobs and energy retrofit services. Through its participation in RGGI, the regional carbon cap-and-trade program; in which ten states compete to lower greenhouse gas pollution most, Massachusetts came out a winner.

The state earned about $50 million last year; money that provided the funding for energy efficiency makeovers for its residents – home heating retrofits for low-income families and job training for emerging zero waste energy businesses.

Cap and trade programs help us earn the money to fund the change to safer, cleaner more secure forms of energy to ensure long term prosperity in the future, by providing an incentive for polluting companies to invest in clean energy.

In the regional cap and trade auctions, states auction nearly all emission allowances and invest the proceeds in consumer benefits: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies. Read the rest of this entry »

Two GREAT videos I just saw this week nail some of the major problems with coal and oil (other than climate change) that we are facing. Without even mentioning the controversial (though scientifically proven) issue of climate change, these videos will stir you and would even get grandma riled up to call Congress, I think.

Watch these videos! They get personal and hopefully they bring to more people’s attention that engaging in a clean energy revolution is about a lot more than the environment (since that just basically isn’t enough for some people).

It’s about freedom, health, national security, and life itself.

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Some leading businesses, Hollywood, Obama, and the public are putting the pressure on Congress to move forward with a comprehensive climate and clean energy bill, but while we wait on that, some Senators have decided to tackle some specific coal pollutants that cost the American public trillions of dollars in healthcare costs, hundreds of thousands of lives, and great human suffering every year in another way.

12 Democratic, Republican and Independent Senators have just put forth “The Clean Air Act Amendments of 2010” to protect countless Americans who are being harmed by extremely toxic coal emissions everyday.

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Step over Siemens, Airvoice Group and Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam are now planning what they say would be the “largest green energy project in the world” in India.

Airvoice Group is an Indian mobile phone and commodity export firm, and it seems to see where the money is going to be in the future — in clean energy. It recently formed a joint venture with public body Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam in order to invest $50 billion in a major clean energy project (perhaps the world’s largest) over the next 10 years. It wants to build 13 GW worth of wind and solar power capacity in a rural area of Karnataka in southwest India.

The majority of the planned capacity would be from solar photovoltaics — 10 GW. And the remaining 3 GW would be from wind farms.

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German engineering giant Siemens is looking to throw some money at solar and wind power in India now. It is going to invest $346 million in India’s renewable energy sector over the next three years.

Peter Löscher, Siemens’ chief executive, said the firm will increase its Indian workforce by about 50 per cent to 25,000 people and about a third of the investment will be for development of wind turbine technology. It is putting some into solar technology development there as well.

India is a major growth market, in general, and renewable energy is no exception.

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Clean energy is one of the top topics in the world these days, in presidential speeches, economic growth plans and projections, international competition and cooperation, and even in Hollywood. We have seen rapid growth in wind power, rooftop solar, innovative financing, and much more recently.

Here is my list of the Top 10 “Clean Energy” Topics (some aren’t what I would consider the cleanest) to keep an eye on.

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In 24 states; the Renewable Energy Standard (RES) has driven what clean new energy the US has.

In the absence of such legislation The Invisible Hand has tended to find that utilities should just continue to source their electricity from traditional sources, with the result that states that do not have an RES have the unhealthiest electricity in the nation.

Arizona was one of the healthy energy states, with a requirement for 15% renewable energy by 2025. But now a Republican state representative in the Arizona state legislature is challenging the right of the Arizona Corporation Commission to set a requirement that utilities add more renewable energy, with a bill that would strip them of the responsibility.
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A new study shows that requiring utility companies to get 25% of their power from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind (by 2025) would result in more jobs.

“A strong renewable electricity standard is crucial to create a stable investment environment and grow this highly promising sector,” says Don Furman, senior vice president for development, transmission, and policy at wind energy company Iberdrola Renewables. “Without a strong RES, the US wind industry will see no net job growth, and will likely lose jobs to overseas competitors.”

Furman’s points here are nothing new. Obama said the same thing very strongly in his State of the Union address and, everyday, I read articles on this matter and on the “clean energy race“.

Nonetheless, this new study puts some numbers into the issue and helps to back up Furman and Obama’s claims. This study found that “the industry would create 274,000 more jobs under a 25 percent renewable power standard than it would create without a mandate.” (emphasis mine)

This is much more than what would be created from the proposed mandate put forth by the House of Representatives as part of a comprehensive climate and energy bill that is now being worked on in the Senate.

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A new poll conducted by Yale University and George Mason University researchers shows that American voters do want strong climate and energy legislation.

“Climate Change in the American Mind: Public Support for Climate & Energy Policies in January 2010” is the name of the poll and it shows bi-partisan support for more clean energy research, controlling CO₂ in our atmosphere, and (once informed on what it is) cap-and-trade legislation, among other things.

Whereas a poll I reported on the other day showed much stronger support for a carbon tax when compared to cap-and-trade (once survey respondents were informed a little on the two systems), this poll does not get into the issue of a carbon tax but finds great support for cap-and-trade.

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The recently much touted alternative “energy only” bill would not cost fossil industries, but instead would cost taxpayers $13.9 billion a year, according to this scoring by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office – that has been gathering dust since September. This failing grade from the CBO has received no publicity at all. I can’t imagine why, can you?

The bill would authorize a total of $48.6 billion over the first three years. It would add $13.5 billion each year to the deficit.

Renewable energy would share $10.4 billion of the $48 billion with electricity supply and electricity delivery funding (or a little over $3 billion a year for renewable energy).  Nuclear energy would get $5.2 billion a year, and $5.5 billion a year would go to fossil energy. The remaining $27 billion would be allocated to science programs.

The bill has no self-funding mechanism.

By contrast, revenues created by the cap and trade component in the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA) would actually fund its renewable energy component, and leave some extra ($21 Billion a year) according to the Congressional Budget Office scoring in December.

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