A theme that I have been writing and speaking about a lot recently is the obligation of industry CEOs to lead their companies in reducing heat-trapping emissions and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy – not only because of the essential societal benefits but because it’s good for business.
Tag:
energy policy
Commission Report Features Financing in Recommendations to Double U.S. Energy Efficiency
written by Walter Wang
The Alliance to Save Energy’s Commission on National Energy Policy included financing as one of the central recommendations in its recent report, “Energy 2030: Doubling U.S. Energy Productivity by 2030.” The commission consists of some of the key leaders in energy policy and business in the United States.
The commission’s plan would use financing programs
I’m fascinated by the dynamics at work in our society that surround climate change. The United States is notably sluggish in its response to the challenge, and, perhaps because of this, certain groups with progressive ideals are getting fairly militant. One example is the Sierra Club, which, after 120 years of law-abiding environmental advocacy, announced recently that it
Here’s an article co-written by environmentalist superstar Bill McKibben that speaks to the need for better public transportation. The authors point out that transportation generally contributes 27% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Since transportation is 98%+ based on gasoline and diesel, it comes with a huge price tag in terms of not only CO2 but damage
Climate change received scant attention in the election campaign. But with public concern about global warming growing in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, President Obama has an unprecedented opportunity to take bold action on climate and clean energy.
As President Barack Obama interprets what the
We’re so politically polarized about energy, it’s news when we’re not.
Exceptions exist, of course, but generally one side identifies with fossil fuels, the other with renewable energy. And energy efficiency seems to be the lucky orphan left out of the pick.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient
Companies often email me asking for good sources of information about the energy efficiency business. These emails are coming more and more frequently as this industry continues to grow.
Many of the emails come from newcomers trying to break into the field with a new product or service.
A much anticipated bill that would have expanded access to solar energy to the majority of Californians failed in the final hours of California’s legislative session on Friday.
SB 843, sponsored by Senator Lois Wolk, would have created a 2 GW shared solar program that
A new report published last week by the anti-regulatory Mercatus Center (an advocacy outfit associated with the Koch brothers) took aim at appliance and vehicle efficiency standards. In the report, the authors argue that standards reduce consumer choice and are not justified because the environmental benefits are small and consumer benefits are non-existent.
We’ve had discussions recently on the amount of subsidies that the fossil fuel industries receive from the federal government here in the U.S. To be sure, there is a great deal of hanky-panky played with these numbers. Let me go out on a limb here and suggest that the accounting method and total number that one chooses is often a function of the case one’s
“It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact that the globe is warming,” said the Republican elder statesman.
While his Republican colleagues continue to dither about climate change and search for the best ways to do nothing about it, elder statesman George Shultz is bucking the party establishment.
I just read the Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and noted that it’s the birthday of May Swenson, an author of the 20th Century who once wrote to a friend, “Not to need illusion—to dare to see and say how things really are, is the emancipation I would like to attain.”
It’s true that we force-fit the facts into our theories.
Perhaps the greatest single threat facing mankind today is our failure to apply reason to effect solutions. In fact, we appear to openly defy and ridicule the findings of our scientific community, writing them off as so many lairs and frauds. At least here in the United States, a significant segment of our population has bought into the idea that science has conspired to fabricate the
I recently wrote a post critical of radical environmentalists who take rigid positions and refuse to make the tough choices that confront us all in the real world. In particular, I stand in disagreement with people’s unwillingness to exile the tortoises from 4613 acres (about five square miles) in the California desert that would have been used for a gigawatt of solar photovoltaics, an almost