Total Transit already operates the largest Toyota Prius taxi fleet in the nation, but it has just “cleaned up” its operations a lot more by installing 400 solar panels (at a cost of $750,000) on the roof of its headquarters in Glendale, Arizona.
Total Transit is the parent company of Discount Cab, which you can find in Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles or Austin.
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.
I just wrote about how it looks like China is going to clean the US’ clock on large-scale clean energy projects. But, as we all know, clean energy doesn’t need to be from (super) large projects to provide people with power. In fact, that is one of the hopes many of us have, that “power” will be more decentralized.
However, something that would combine those two approaches — large-scale, centralized power and small-scale, decentralized projects — might be ideal, providing the best advantages of both approaches. That’s exactly what large-scale distributed energy power purchase agreements do.
Additionally, it looks like they are here!
Obama said just the other day that “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy,” and I got into a little discussion about the rivalry between Obama and the President of China, Hu Jintao, on this topic.
I thought I would leave that issue for awhile to cover other stories, but then this landed at my feet and I couldn’t resist. China’s upcoming Big Clean Energy plans are HUGE and are likely to dwarf what are currently the largest wind power and solar power projects in the world.
Well, it has been a long time coming, but the US is finally putting some money into high-speed rail (HSR)!
Obama put a strong focus on this in his State of the Union speech last night — “From the first railroads to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete. There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains…. Tomorrow, I’ll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act. There are projects like that all across this country that will create jobs and help our nation move goods, services, and information.”
Now, the White House has just announced the 12 rail lines that will receive billions of dollars for HSR in the very near future. If these HSR projects come to fruition, the US may finally be level with Europe and China.
Will this be the start we need to transform our transportation system in the US?
You don’t often see affordable housing and solar power being combined. There have been a couple of projects in San Francisco and San Diego in the past year. But Sunwheel Energy Partners just went way beyond that — it just finished a major solar installation on affordable housing units in San Francisco and it hired the residents to install the photovoltaics.
This great project was part of San Francisco’s larger GoSolarSF initiative (launched by San Francisco Mayor and contributing author on CleanTechnica Gavin Newsome).
It’s not a team from the Sunshine State (Florida), but one from equally sunny California. The NBA team with a huge new solar installation is the Golden State Warriors.
You may think that putting some solar panels on a practice facility isn’t a big deal. But when you consider that this solar installation will save the team $2 million in electricity costs over the next couple of decades ($36,000 in its first year of operation), that changes things a bit.
The Golden State Warriors cut the ribbon on this new installation on Thursday, January 21st.
Solar hot water is finally getting the respect it deserves in California. In some well designed and much awaited legislation, the California Public Utilities Commission has decided, after a lengthy cost-benefit analysis, to go ahead with a nearly statewide program to provide financial incentives to encourage the rapid development of the solar hot water industry in California. For most utility customers, this will bring costs down by 51% to 60%, into 3 year payback territory.
The measure will bring major greenhouse gas reductions to the state, because all buildings that use the sun to preheat 55 degree city water to about 90 degrees before it gets to the tank; can reduce their natural gas use 25% to 90% with solar hot water. And with these incentives, it becomes cost-effective right away.
Read the rest of this entry »
First Solar’s utility-scale PV plant has now been quietly up and running, in Blythe, California, for its first full month. Once it got a go-ahead in the summer this project only took three months to build.
Perhaps its relatively smaller size for utility-scale solar holds a key to its success in getting off the ground. Unlike the 250 MW solar trough technologies that are held up in reviews, this project is a modest 21 MW.
Read the rest of this entry »
CleanTechnica
Since February 2008, CleanTechnica.com has provided news and information about the future of clean energy technology.
CleanTechnica is a One Block Off the Grid Production.
Some Rights Reserved
