I should start this off with a disclosure. I know Joseph Mangum personally. However, I am not profiting in any way from this message, aside from the feeling I get from being able to spread it here. I can say I believe that Joseph’s message is true, precisely as he presents it.
Green Mountain Power in Vermont is offering customers a $10,000 rebate on a new Nissan LEAF in an effort to get more people to switch to emissions free driving.
Vermont is currently enacting some of the most restrictive rules on wind power in the country, even as it pushes for some of the biggest cuts to carbon emissions. In May, Vermont’s Public Service Board issued a new rulefor wind projects that includes strict setback requirements and noise limits.
Sunrun, one of the United States’ leading residential solar developers, announced this week that it has recently completed expanding into seven new US state markets, nearly doubling its market reach in just under four months.
It’s been a huge month for Vivint Solar, one of the United States’ leading residential solar providers, and it continues the upward momentum this week, announcing that it will be expanding its services into Vermont.
The Vermont Public Service Board has sent recommendations to the legislature for new sound standards for utility-scale wind projects. Critics say the standards are so strict that the effectively kill development of wind power in the state.
Tesla has a new idea it calls aggregation and it is the next step in its plan to bring renewable energy to the utility grid. The first phase of that plan is the installation of Tesla Powerpack grid scale storage units at substations throughout the area served by a utility. The second phase is linking thousands of individual Powerwall residential battery systems to provide extra storage capacity.
Hello Solar put together an interactive map documenting all of the cities in the US that have committed to moving to 100% renewable energy*. The map includes the timing on which the cities have committed to complete the transition and the population of each for context. (Note: since the site and many cities write “100% renewable energy,” we are using that language, but many of these commitments are actually just about 100% renewable energy for electricity or electricity + heating.)
One of the wonderful things we have in the Vermont is a real democracy, in which the voice of the people can be heard. The Representative Town Meeting of Brattleboro, Vermont voted on the following motion, which I brought to the floor on March 25, 2017:
Americans pay billions of dollars each year in hidden taxes. No one asked for them. No one voted for them. No legislature passed them into law. But they are real, and we all pay them, whether we like it or not. The really horrible thing about these hidden taxes is that they are increasing dramatically and could even cause an economic meltdown. I will give a couple of examples.
