In this episode of the Local Energy Rules Podcast, host John Farrell speaks with Jamie Valdez about Pueblo, Colorado’s efforts to municipalize. In its push for 100% renewable energy, Pueblo went head to head with a power monopoly and has learned the heavy costs of facing a utility giant. Valdez offers up Pueblo’s story to other municipalization efforts nationwide and speaks of the hope the movement still has.
If each US state took full advantage of its renewable resources, how much electricity would it produce? How much of its own electricity consumption could renewable energy fulfill? Would in-state renewable generation be enough to charge electric vehicles and power electric heating, too? The answer, in almost every state, is a resounding yes.
In this episode of the Local Energy Rules Podcast, host John Farrell speaks with Jay Egg, a geothermal expert, about the potential of minimizing the carbon footprint of heating and cooling buildings by adapting water mains to capture the heat just below the Earth’s surface. They discuss successful geothermal projects in Canada and the triumphs and challenges of projects in the U.S.
A “natural monopoly” is a service or product that gets cheaper as the market grows. Hempling says that the idea of a natural monopoly has changed dramatically in recent years and that many have lost sight of natural monopoly’s place in energy markets.
This report explores the phenomenon of undercounting customer-sited and non-utility solar energy in Minnesota: a state with several adopted policies expressing a public interest in distributed generation.
This article was originally published at ILSR.org. A concerted effort is growing in the Northeast to address renewable energy goals and make renewable energy accessible to everyone. Co-op Power is on the front lines, coordinating community power and constructing valuable policy resources to change legislation and the lives of many … [continued]
The global pandemic has put a pause to all kinds of commerce. As wildfire season nears and climate change worsens, are solar and storage companies still preparing communities for the disasters ahead?
With city and state budgets stretched to their limits, families struggling to stay afloat, and one all-absorbing crisis on everyone’s mind, can clean energy planning proceed in a pandemic?
With financial rewards tied to building big things, and a 100-year history of doing so, utilities overlook distributed energy resources like rooftop solar. State regulators, expecting the grid future to unfold from a utility’s central plan, rarely push back. But the truth is that central planning may cost everyone (except utility shareholders) more, because the most cost-effective electricity system can be built from the bottom up.
Supporters of clean and affordable energy dream of neighborhoods powered by rooftop solar. In D.C., this vision is becoming reality; the district is en route to 100% renewable energy in just twelve years.
