Energy

Obama Administration Rejects “Keep It In The Ground”

May 27, 2016 Justin Mikulka, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Barack Obama, Climate Change, Energy

By Justin Mikulka for Desmog - “We’re certainly not advocating any strategy for reducing hydrocarbon emissions by keeping oil in the ground…that’s not a position.” This was the response of Christopher A. Smith when he was asked what he thought of the “growing movement of keeping oil in the ground” at the 2016 Columbia Global Energy Summit in April. Since Chris Smith worked for more than a decade for Chevron and Texaco, this answer should not surprise anyone.

How To Socialize America’s Energy

May 22, 2016 Kate Aronoff, www.theleapblog.org Create! Electric Cooperatives, Energy, Leap Manifesto, Public Utilities, Socialism

By Kate Aronoff for the LEAP Blog. Today’s renewable energy sector, while growing rapidly, hardly offers a roadmap to the transition needed. As billionaires battle over the profits promised by the “clean energy revolution,” experts agree that cobbling together private-sector solutions will not be enough. Neither will the boutique solutions on offer from the left. A more radical approach—one commensurate to the scale of the problem—will require state intervention. Yet traditional forms of public investment remain elusive. Calls for a Green New Deal or wartime-level mobilization against climate change, to use the oft-invoked metaphors (A “Marshall Plan for the Earth,” in Naomi Klein’s version), each take their cues from an economic ideology antithetical to today’s. Instead of direct investment, funding for renewables comes largely via tax credits and market-based incentives for private companies, including the recently extended 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar. Public infrastructure spending and job creation programs remain off the table.

Energy Prize Winners Tackle The Future Of Power

May 12, 2016 David J. Unger, www.insideclimatenews.org Create! Clean Energy, Energy

By David J. Unger for Inside Climate News - Up to now, these highly localized versions of power plants, which serve mainly hospitals, military bases and colleges, have been more micro than grid because they don't work well with each other. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D. student and four colleagues were creating one at Stone Edge Farm in Sonoma, Calif., last year when they stumbled on a way to make them communicate more effectively.

Fight World’s Dirtiest Energy, Corporate Coups & How East Was Lost

May 12, 2016 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Resistance Report Corporations, Energy, Fossil Fuels, Fracking

By Eleanor Goldfield for Occupy - This week: Break Free from fossil fuels, rebel against the fracking infrastructure, glean some inspiration from our European anti-corporate coup comrades and join the fight against lame ducks and their sneaky deals. Finally, Raed Jarrar has lived our Middle East policy and is now working to change it. But first, lunacy's loop: god and war.

Disrupting Solar

May 9, 2016 Peter Diamandis, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Energy, Solar Energy

By Peter Diamandis for The Huffington Post - In the next 20 years, between 50 percent to 100 percent of the world’s energy production could come from solar. Today, the global oil and natural gas industry is about a $4 trillion business. It’s big money, and in the U.S., 67 percent of the electricity generated in 2015 was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum). This is about to change.

Duke Energy Shareholder Meeting Turns To Green Energy, Environment

May 6, 2016 Bruce Henderson, www.charlotteobserver.com Resist! Duke Energy, Energy, Environment

By Bruce Henderson for The Charlotte Observer - Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good faced advocates Thursday at a shareholder meeting that has become an annual debate over the company’s environmental policies. Shareholder voting took care of most of the meeting’s official business, including re-election of 12 directors (four more retired) and approval of top executives’ pay. A shareholder proposal to let simple majority votes apply in more situations passed, while a proposal that Duke disclose more about its lobbying activities failed.

Baltimore Youth Leader Wins Goldman Environmental Prize

April 19, 2016 Greg Sawtell, www.unitedworkers.org Resist! Baltimore, Energy, Environment, health, Trash incinerator

By Greg Sawtell for United Workers. Baltimore, MD - The Goldman Environmental Foundation today announced the six recipients of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest award for grassroots environmental activists. Awarded annually to environmental heroes from each of the world’s six inhabited continental regions, the Goldman Prize recognizes fearless grassroots activists for significant achievements in protecting the environment and their communities. Baltimore youth leader, Destiny Watford, is one of the six global winners, for her work to spearhead efforts to stop the nation’s largest trash burning incinerator from being built less than a mile from her public high school in Curtis Bay.

Changing Everything

April 10, 2016 Steve Gorelick, www.localfutures.org Create! Capitalism, Climate Change, Energy, Renewable Energy

By Steve Gorelick for Local Futures. It seems that a transition to renewable energy might not be as transformative as some people hope. Or to put it more bluntly, renewable energy changes nothing about corporate capitalism. Which brings me to the new film, This Changes Everything, based on Naomi Klein’s best-selling book and directed by her husband, Avi Lewis. I saw the film recently at a screening hosted by local climate activists and renewable energy developers, and was at first hopeful that the film would go even further than the book in, as Klein puts it, “connecting the dots between the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there.” But by film’s end one is left with the impression that a transition from fossil fuels to renewables is pretty much all that’s needed – not only to address climate change but to transform the economy and solve all the other problems we face.

New Electrical Energy Generated In January Came From Wind & Solar

March 9, 2016 Staff, www.ecowatch.com Create! Energy, Solar, Wind

By Staff of Eco Watch - In the first 2016 issue of its monthly Energy Infrastructure Update report, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) notes that five new “units” of wind (468 megawatts) and six new units of solar (145 megawatts) accounted for 100 percent of new electrical generation brought into service in January. No new capacity for nuclear, coal, gas or oil was reported. Renewables now account for 17.93 percent of total installed operating generating capacity in the U.S.: hydropower (8.56 percent), wind (6.37 percent), biomass (1.43 percent), solar (1.24 percent) and geothermal (0.33 percent). In fact, installed capacity for non-hydro renewables...

Government Research On Battery Storage Will Transform Energy Grid

March 4, 2016 Suzanne Goldenberg, www.theguardian.com Create! Energy, Research

By Suzanne Goldenberg for The Guardian - A US government agency says it has attained the “holy grail” of energy – the next-generation system of battery storage, that has been hotly pursued by the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (Arpa-E) – a branch of the Department of Energy – says it achieved its breakthrough technology in seven years. Ellen Williams, Arpa-E’s director, said: “I think we have reached some holy grails in batteries – just in the sense of demonstrating that we can create a totally new approach to battery technology, make it work, make it commercially viable, and get it out there to let it do its thing,”

Commentary: Clean Power Plan Is Neither Clean Nor Powerful

March 4, 2016 Sandra Steingraber, www.theithacan.org Resist! Clean Power Plan, Climate Change, Energy

By Sandra Steingraber for The Ithacan - Last December, I attended the U.N. climate talks in Paris as a science journalist. Equipped with a press pass, I had extraordinary access to the goings-on and witnessed a climate change agreement drafted, finalized and approved by virtually all of the world’s nations. Many stars aligned to make possible the success of this 21st attempt at a climate change treaty — not the least of which was the introduction of a process that compelled each of the parties to submit, in advance of negotiations, a proposal for cutting emissions that was specific to its own nation.

Freeing The Klamath: Water Rights Issues Remain Unresolved

February 28, 2016 Zoe Loftus-Farren, www.earthisland.org Create! Energy, Environment, Water, wildlife

By Zoe Loftus-Farren for Earth Island Journal. Northwestern United States - After more than a decade of negotiating, and waiting, and negotiating again, it looks like four dams on the lower Klamath River may finally be removed. On February 2, a coalition of state governments, the US Department of the Interior, and dam-owner PacifiCorp reached a tentative agreement to demolish the dams, which are located in Oregon and Northern California. The group has set February 29 as the target date for signing the “agreement in principle.” The new agreement in principle comes after years of congressional delay on an earlier set of agreements, which addressed not only dam demolition, but also water allocation and habitat restoration along the Klamath.

Your Help Needed: Exelon-Pepco Make Bad Deal With DC

February 26, 2016 Mike Ewall, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Corporatism, Energy, Environmental Justice, health

By Mike Ewall of Energy Justice Network. Washington, DC - The effort by nuclear utility giant, Exelon, to swallow up our local electric utility (Pepco) was just DENIED again today by DC's Public Service Commission (PSC)! This merger would have formed the nation's largest electric utility, raised rates for DC residents, and would have harmed renewable energy efforts while helping subsidize ailing nuclear power plants elsewhere in the country. This is a great victory, as Mayor Bowser sought to overturn the PSC's previous rejection of the merger with some serious arm-twisting and a settlement that failed to address the underlying problems with the merger.

Fossil Fuel Industry Pushing Exports Of Carbon Energy

February 9, 2016 Steve Horn, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Congress, Energy, Fossil Fuels, Policy

By Steve Horn for Counter Punch - As the U.S. presidential race dominates the media, it is easy to forget that both chambers of the U.S. Congress are currently in session. The U.S. Senate has put a major energy bill on the table, the first of its sort since 2007. The 237-page bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) —S. 2012, the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 — includes provisions that would expedite the liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permitting process, heap subsidies on coal technology, and fund research geared toward discovering a way to tap into methane hydrate reserves.

Cape Cod Activist Found Guilty; Act Of Conscience Or Crime?

February 8, 2016 Karen Vale, www.capecodbaywatch.org Resist! Activists, Arrest, Energy, Massachusetts, Protests

By Karen Vale for Cape Cod Bay Watch. Plymouth, MA - Seventy-three year old Paul Rifkin of Mashpee, Mass. was on trial February 2 at Plymouth District Court. The charge was trespassing at Entergy’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station on Mother’s Day in 2015 during a rally with 40 other protestors. Two people were arrested, and it was Rifkin’s third arrest at Pilgrim. Rifkin refused to plead guilty or accept a deal with the prosecution because his actions last May, he stated, “deserved commendation, not condemnation.” He chose to have a jury trial with the possibility of jail time. A jury of six was selected and Rifkin represented himself.

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