Energy

By David Timmons | – The main solution to climate change is well known – stop burning fossil fuels. How to do this is more complicated, but as a scholar who does energy modeling, I and others see the outlines of a post-fossil-fuel future: We make electricity with renewable sources and electrify almost everything. That […]

Climate Change

Bernie Sanders’ Manhattan Project: The Game-Changing Green New Deal

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sen. Bernie Sanders’ breathtaking Green New Deal, with an advertised price tag of $16.3 trillion, is aimed at nothing less than saving the planet from the worst consequences of global heating. The plan aims to create 20 million new, well-paying jobs. It should be noted that one possible outcome of […]

Featured

Trump wrong Again: Offshore Wind a “New Industrial Revolution”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Donald Trump is both an ignoramus and a loudmouth, and has used his vast fund of cluelessness to talk down wind power. He says that if you depend on wind power, your t.v. won’t work when the wind abruptly stops blowing. This is not true. He says that wind power […]

Fracking

Stop It! Fracking Can’t be Done in a way that doesn’t Threaten Human Life

OtherWords

By Barbara Gottlieb | – Over 1,500 reports show there’s simply no safe way to do it — and it’s harming us all every day it goes on. Science. Evidence. Facts. Do these even matter anymore in U.S. policy? They should — especially when it comes to issues that affect our health and environment, like […]

Solar Energy

Saving the Planet: Can Global Solar Power be Crowd-Funded? Germany’s “Green Energy Valley”

Clean Energy Wire

By Freja Eriksen | – German start-up Ecoligo has created a crowd investment structure to encourage the expansion of solar power in developing countries, writes business daily Handelsblatt. The two founders, Martin Baart and Markus Schwaniger, saw high interest rates on loans and high investment risks as hurdles for solar power expansion in countries like […]

Donald Trump

Why Trump let Saudi Arabia and UAE censor his “America First” Speech on Energy

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Sunday the NYT revealed that Trump’s staff ran his May, 2016 speech on “America First” by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their input into the energy passages, and actually altered the text based on their editing. The hollow joke of Trump’s “America first” slogan could not […]

Climate Change

Scotland Renewables making enough Electricity to power Two Scotlands and other Wind Power Successes

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As The Independent put it in its headline, for the first six months of this year, Scotland generated enough electricity with wind turbines to power two Scotlands (with regard to household energy requirements). Of course, households are not the only consumers of electricity– industry and retail are big in that […]

Featured

Even Red States are going Solar, dumping Coal, as just Good Business

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Arizona, despite being GOP-dominated, is number 3 in the US for residential solar power production. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, Arizona homeowners put in 52.83 megawatts of new solar installations. As for industrial-scale solar, Arizona utility APS generates 1.4 gigawatts worth of solar power, equivalent to a small […]

Climate Change

In Just the Past Year, German CO2 Emissions fell by 33%, as Gas Replaced Coal

Clean Energy Wire

The end for German Coal could come Sooner than anyone Expects