Renewable Energy

A “Year Of Eye-Catching Steps Forward” For Renewable Energy

April 1, 2015 Sean Buchanan, www.ipsnews.net Create! Environment, Oil & Gas, Renewable Energy

Driven by solar and wind, world investments in renewable energy reversed a two-year dip last year, brushing aside the challenge from sharply lower oil prices and registering a 17 percent leap over the previous year to stand at 270 billion dollars. These investments helped see an additional 103Gw of generating capacity – roughly that of all U.S. nuclear plants combined –around the world, making 2014 the best year ever for newly-installed capacity, according to the 9th annual “Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investments” report from the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) released Mar. 31.

Fukushima: Amidst Radioactive Ruins, Renewable Energy Soars

March 13, 2015 Harvey Wasserman, www.commondreams.org Create! Fukushima, Japan, Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy

The catastrophe that began at Fukushima four years ago today is worse than ever. But the good news can ultimately transcend the bad—if we make it so. An angry grassroots movement has kept shut all 54 reactors that once operated in Japan. It’s the largest on-going nuke closure in history. Big industrial windmills installed off the Fukushima coast are now thriving. Five U.S. reactors have shut since March 11, 2011. The operable fleet is under 100 for the first time in decades. Ohio’s Davis-Besse, New York’s Ginna, five reactors in Illinois and other decrepit American nukes could shut soon without huge ratepayer bailouts. Diablo Canyon was retrofitted—probably illegally—with $842 million in replacement partsuntested for seismic impact.

Anti-Fracking & No-Nukes Activists Join Forces For Renewable Energy

February 6, 2015 Harvey Wasserman, www.commondreams.org Organize! Energy, Environment, Fossil Fuel, Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy

In the wake of Fukushima, the global campaign to bury atomic power has gained enormous strength. All Japan’s 54 reactors remain shut. Germany is amping up its renewable energy generation with a goal of 80 percent or more by 2050. Four U.S. reactors under construction are far over budget and behind schedule. Five old ones have closed in the last two years. In New England and elsewhere, as the old nukes go down, safe energy activists shift their attention to the deadly realities of fossil fuel extraction. The issues are familiar. Fracking in particular poisons our water and spews out huge quantities of lethal radiation. Ironically, in Ohio and elsewhere, the seismic instability it creates threatens atomic reactors still in operation.

How Solar Power Could Slay The Fossil Fuel Empire By 2030

December 26, 2014 Nafeez Ahmed, www.motherboard.vice.com Educate! Coal, Extreme Energy, Oil and Gas, Renewable Energy, Solar

In just 15 years, the world as we know it will have transformed forever. The age of oil, gas, coal and nuclear will be over. A new age of clean power and smarter cars will fundamentally, totally, and permanently disrupt the existing fossil fuel-dependent industrial infrastructure in a way that even the most starry-eyed proponents of ‘green energy’ could never have imagined. We are in the midst of transformation: Solar panels 154 times cheaper than 1970, extraction of fossil fuels getting more expensive, solar has improved its cost basis by 5,355 times relative to oil since 1970, there are 300,000 solar installations in the US right now, by 2022 there will be 20 million, globally installed solar capacity will reach 56.7 terrawatts (TW) in the next 15 years projected world energy demand at that time would be 16.9 TW -- remember the phrase "clean disruption."

Watch One Of World’s Largest Solar Farms Being Built

November 28, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Create! Environment, Renewable Energy

Below are two videos describing one of the world’s largest solar projects, a massive solar farm in San Luis Obispo County, California. The Topaz Solar Farm will be a 550 megawatt photovoltaic (PV) solar farm Located on the northwestern corner of the Carrisa Plains. The Topaz Solar Farm will produce sufficient electricity to power between 150,000 and 200,000 California homes. It will displace 377,000 tons of CO2 annually—equivalent to taking 73,000 cars off the road. It will provide $192 million in compensation for approximately 400 construction jobs over a 3-year period; $52 million in economic output for local suppliers and $14 million in sales taxes during construction and up to $400,000 per year in new property tax revenues.

Abundant Clean Renewables? Think Again!

November 18, 2014 Almuth Ernsting, www.truth-out.org Create! Climate Change, Environment, Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is growing faster than ever before. Sure, some countries are lagging behind, but others are setting widely praised records.Many view such news as rays of hope in a rapidly destabilizing climate. We all need some good news - but is renewables expansion really the good news people like to think? Can we really put our hopes for stabilizing the climate into trying to simply replace the energy sources in a growth-focused economic and social model that was built on fossil fuels? Or do we need a far more fundamental transition towards a low-energy economy and society? Here's the first problem with celebratory headlines over renewables: Record renewable energy hasn't stopped record fossil fuel burning, including record levels of coal burning. Coal use is growing so fast that the International Energy Authority expects it to surpass oil as the world's top energy source by 2017.

Renewable Energy ‘Creates More Jobs Than Fossil Fuels’

November 12, 2014 Anastasia Pantsios, www.ecowatch.com Create! Jobs, Renewable Energy

A new study by the UK’s Energy Research Centre (UKERC) took a deep dive into job creation claims made by proponents of renewable energy and energy efficiency, looking at the figures and projected figures for the EU from a number of angles. It came to the conclusion that in the short run, moving to renewables and ramping up energy conservation would create more jobs than the fossil fuel sector, at a rate of about one job per gigawatt hour of electricity saved or generated by a clean energy source, with the long-term picture murkier because of factors in the economy and government policy that are hard to predict. The report, Low Carbon Jobs: The evidence for net job creation from policy support for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said, “‘Green’ sectors account for as many as 3.4 million jobs in the EU, or 1.7 percent of all paid employment, more than car manufacturing or pharmaceuticals.

Greenpeace Climbs Oil Derrick To Push For Solar Energy

November 4, 2014 Greenpeace, www.http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/ Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Renewable Energy

Early this morning four Greenpeace activists climbed the 40-metre-high, historic Leduc drilling platform at Edmonton’s Gateway Park to hang a large banner saying: “Go Solar: 100% Climate Safe”. They set up a small solar panel on the derrick, using its energy to power a sound system playing music proclaiming the power of the sun. The Leduc oil derrick, which launched western Canada’s oil boom 70 years ago, was chosen as a symbolic location to say it’s time to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy for the sake of the climate. “Fossil fuels may have powered the industrial revolution, but it’s time for the sun and other renewable energy sources to power the next,” said Mike Hudema, an Alberta-based Climate and Energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada.

Decentralized, Backyard Energy Could Be The Sustainable Future

November 1, 2014 Paul Hockenos, www.foreignpolicy.com Create! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Renewable Energy

SCHWÄBISCH HALL, Germany — On any given day, Johannes van Bergen, director of the municipal utility Stadtwerke Schwäbisch Hall in southwestern Germany, conducts his team's array of gas, heat, and electricity sources to meet the energy needs of at least several hundred thousand Swabians in the region, as well as about more than 90,000 customers elsewhere in Germany. And every day -- in fact, every hour -- that energy mix is constantly in flux. Technicians at the town's smart-grid center monitor and manage the utility's roughly 3,000 regional energy suppliers: several thousand solar photovoltaic (PV) installations, two wind parks, one gas-and-steam power station, six small hydro-electric works, three biomass (wood pellet), six biogas plants, and 48 combined heat and power plants, as well as other conventional and renewable energy suppliers outside the municipality.

Proving Power of Renewables In Europe

October 21, 2014 Deirdre Fulton, www.bullhorn.nationofchange.org Create! Energy, Environment, Europe, Renewable Energy

The wind power boom in Nordic countries is making fossil fuel-fired power plants obsolete and is pushing electricity prices down, according to reporting by Reuters published Friday. Power prices in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have dropped sharply as renewable energy floods the market, efficiency measures lower energy use overall, and growth remains stagnant, reporter Nerijus Adomaitis writes. This, in turn, will lead to the "mothballing" of 2,000 megawatts (MW) of coal capacity in Denmark and Finland over the next 15 years, a Norway-based consultant tells Adomaitis. According to the article, "Pushing fossil-fueled power stations out of the Nordic generation park is part of government plans across the region."

Walmart’s Walton Family Threatens America’s Renewable Energy Future

October 16, 2014 Anastasia Pantsios, www.ecowatch.com Educate! Energy, Renewable Energy, Walmart

Although Walmart has installed more solar power capacity than any other U.S. company, its owners, the Walton family, have invested millions in groups that are fighting to limit the development of solar power, according to a new report from the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). The report, How The Walton Family Is Threatening Our Clean Energy Future, resolves the contradiction by pointing to the multibillionaires’ main motivation: profit. According to the report, “The Walton family—majority owners of Walmart—are impeding America’s transition to a clean energy future. At a time when more than 500,000 households and businesses are generating their own solar electricity, and the U.S. solar industry is employing 143,000 people, the Waltons are funding nearly two dozen organizations working to roll back renewable energy policies, while a Walton-owned company is pushing for regulations aimed at hindering the growth of rooftop solar power.”

Sunshine State Blocks Solar, Favors Coal And Nuclear

October 12, 2014 Evan Halper, www.latimes.com Create! Renewable Energy, Solar

Florida is one of several states, mostly in the Southeast, that combine copious sunshine with extensive rules designed to block its use by homeowners to generate power. States like Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — not known for clear, blue skies — have outpaced their counterparts to the south in the installation of rooftop solar panels. While the precise rules vary from state to state, one explanation is the same: opposition from utilities grown nervous by the rapid encroachment of solar firms on their business. The business models that have made solar systems financially viable for millions of homeowners in California, New England and elsewhere around the country are largely illegal in Florida, Virginia, South Carolina and some other Southern states. Companies that pioneered the industry, such as SolarCity Corp. and Sunrun Inc., do not even attempt to do business there.

World’s First Carbon Neutral Poo Power Plant

September 29, 2014 Taylor Hill, www.takepart.com Create! California, Energy, Environment, Government, Renewable Energy

How’s this for greening the desert: Officials in the California community of Victor Valley on Friday unveiled the United States’ first carbon-neutral wastewater treatment plant. Biogas produced from food waste and sewage powers the plant while keeping tons of garbage out of landfills. Officials at the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority expect the system to operate independent of the power grid by 2015, diverting more than 1,400 tons of waste from the trash heap. “Why would we not want to recover the inherent energy in our waste to power this facility so that we’re out of that Edison cycle of ‘Well, here’s your rate increase, here’s your rate increase’ every year?” Logan Olds, general manager of the high desert city, told the Daily Press.

Boom-or-Doom Riddle For Nuclear Industry

July 29, 2014 Paul Brown, www.climatenewsnetwork.net Educate! Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy

The nuclear industry remains remarkably optimistic about its future, despite evidence that it is a shrinking source of power as renewables increasingly compete to fill the energy gap. LONDON, 26 July, 2014 − The headline figures for 2014 from the nuclear industry describe a worldwide boom in progress, with 73 reactors presently being built and another 481 new ones either planned or approved. The World Nuclear Association (WNA) official website paints a rosy picture of an industry expected to expand dramatically by 2030. It says that over the period 1996 to 2013 the world retired 66 reactors, and 71 started operation. Between now and 2030, the industry expects another 74 reactors to close, but 272 new ones to come on line. This represents a much larger net increase in nuclear electricity production than the basic figures suggest because most of the newer power stations have a bigger capacity than those closing down. Pipe dream Detractors of the industry say that these projections are a pipe dream and that nuclear power will not expand at that pace, if at all, and that solar and wind power will grow much faster to fill the energy gap.

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