Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Low prices for wind, solar, and battery storage technology will result in nearly half of the world’s electricity coming from zero-emission energy resources by the middle of the century, according to Bloomberg/NEF’s latest projections.
The fault for this lies on both sides of the aisle and is the consequence of decades of hyper-partisanship. The loss of faith in our democracy comes with the blurring of the lines separating the three separate but equal branches of government.
The push by corporate America and some large environmental organizations to support some form of a national carbon tax should be followed closely. I expect the battles between progressives and moderates will burn red hot before it’s all over.
Although basically a “clipping service,” I’ve taken Climate Politics/Capitol Light a step further by introducing a sentence or two into each of the write-ups about why I think the actions reported on are important and where they might fit in the political scheme of things.
The US Chamber of Commerce, through its Global Energy Institute (GEI), recently announced the launch of a major new climate initiative called the American Energy: Cleaner, Stronger campaign
American governments thus face a challenge on the scale of mobilizing to win World War II—perhaps bigger. Unprecedented measures must be put in place both to move completely out of fossil fuels well before mid-century and also to pursue far-reaching and costly adaptation.
Documents released by the Department of the Interior — and then retracted a day later — reveal that agency officials dismissed evidence that public lands provide numerous benefits in favor of prioritizing fossil fuel interests, along with ranching and logging.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if the battles being fought to maintain federal energy and environment policies and programs are clouding the nation’s collective understanding of what the war being waged against the Trump administration is really about?
The new U.S. energy policy of the Trump era is, in some ways, the oldest energy policy on Earth. Every great power has sought to mobilize the energy resources at its command, whether those be slaves, wind-power, coal, or oil, to further its hegemonic ambitions.
On Monday, a group of 21 youth plaintiffs currently suing the federal government over climate change will go before a federal court to argue that their case — which legal experts have classified as a groundbreaking piece of climate litigation — should be allowed to proceed to trial.
I evaluate global climate models to see if they have the right large-scale weather patterns in them to accurately and correctly simulate things like drought, heavy rainfall events, cold or hot events, at the local scale. Depending on what region of the world you’re looking at and depending on what question you’re asking, sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes the answer is no.
The US electricity system is often described as the world’s largest machine. It is also incredibly diverse, reflecting the policy preferences, needs and available natural resources of each state. Carbon Brief has plotted the nation’s power stations in an interactive map (above) to show how and where the US generates electricity.
