If you’ve been reading CleanTechnica long enough, you know that 8 to 10 years ago, I used to publish reports on solar power capacity per capita — for both US states and countries around the world. I’m returning to these, starting with this one on the top solar states.
On Sept 1, 2020, the Alabama Public Service Commission dismissed a challenge against Alabama Power’s discriminatory solar charge, which, since 2013, has limited the rights of Alabama homeowners and businesses to create solar power on their own properties and reduce their electric bills.
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has been promoting and tracking clean energy in the US Southeast for many years. It now puts out an annual Solar in the Southeast report. Along with state comparisons on megawatts of solar installed, policy, and other matters, SACE actually calculates and shares installed solar capacity per customer for states and utilities.
Last month, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its seasonal forecast for the spring flooding season, I was jolted into a reality that some people in the US are already experiencing: extreme weather stops for no virus. Just days after NOAA’s forecast came out, the flooding arrived: floodwaters from heavy rains in central and southern Ohio required the evacuation of dozens of people, leading one local sheriff to state, “God knows how we will figure it out with COVID-19.”
The Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) is tracking which utilities are suspending disconnections during the coronavirus outbreak, as well as regulators that are mandating suspensions.
US President* Donald Trump rolled into office hating on wind energy and cheering on the steel industry, and you’ll never guess what happened next.
Alabama Power, which serves two-thirds of electricity customers in the state, assesses people who have rooftop solar systems a fee of $5.00 a month for each kilowatt their systems generate. Some residential customers are challenging those fees.
Oil spills don’t make the news very often unless they are big, like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, which killed 11 people and spewed an estimated 205 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But spills happen frequently. According to data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there were 137 oil spills in 2018, about 11 per month.
The emerging popularity of electric vehicles has helped to alleviate the burden of vehicular carbon dioxide emissions. Nevertheless, American states still have an outsized carbon footprint. With gas-powered vehicles responsible for troubling carbon dioxide emissions in the US, a small difference, such as driving with a coworker and/or driving electric, can help create change.
Mercedes says it has committed to purchasing battery cells worth $23 billion between now and 2030. All those cells will be used to build battery packs at factories in Kamenz, Untertuerkheim, and Sindelfingen in Germany, as well as Beijing, Bangkok, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama according to Reuters.
