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Clean Energy News
Join Senator Reid’s Clean Energy Town Hall April 14th
04/07/2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is leading the charge in Washington to pursue a clean energy economy. Sen. Reid was one of the first in Nevada to speak out against three proposed dirty coal plants — two of which have since been postponed. He is a dogged advocate for pursuing renewable energy nationwide that will create jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and stabilize utility bills.
On Tuesday, April 14th, Sen. Reid will hold a town hall discussion on clean energy in Las Vegas. You can join him for this important discussion by watching a live online webcast of the event at www.reid.senate.gov.
US Agency Moves Toward Smart-grid Road Map
04/09/2009
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a US$1.3 million contract to the Electric Power Research Institute to help the agency determine the architecture and initial standards for an electric-power smart grid.
EPRI, a nonprofit research and development group, will help NIST create an interim road map for the smart grid, a nationwide network that will use information technology with the goal of helping U.S. utilities deliver electricity more efficiently and reliably. NIST and EPRI announced the contract Wednesday.
A $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by the U.S. Congress in February includes $4.5 billion for smart-grid projects across the U.S. President Barack Obama and other backers of a smart grid say an upgrade of the aging U.S. electricity system is needed in order to use energy more efficiently and to make use of alternative energy sources.
‘Smart grid,’ big savings
04/09/2009
It’s the principle behind every clearance sale: The less a product is in demand, the less it sells for. So why can’t we extend the same principle to one of the most basic commodities of all - electricity?
The demand for electricity fluctuates every day. It tends to be highest in the afternoon (when people are at work and when lights, computers and heating and cooling are running at full blast) and lowest at night. But most people can’t take full advantage of the lowest-demand hours, because homes can’t "talk back" to utilities. Your home and your utility still have a primitive way of communicating: a meter that can’t do more than spin faster or slower.
Imagine, though, that your home knew the cost of power from second to second. Imagine that it could tell you that power’s source, from a coal-fired plant to a wind farm. Imagine that you could sell electricity back to the grid. Those steps add up to one of the biggest energy innovations on the horizon: the "smart grid,"
Opeds & Editorials
Climate change as a security issue
03/20/2009
In the age of information we live in today, it is increasingly difficult to disseminate what to believe, especially on those topics for which we ourselves are not an expert. The pervasiveness of "facts" crowd through the airwaves, Internet and the daily papers at an ever increasing speed, and seem to confuse more than clarify issues that are hard to grasp.
Among the topics most debated back and forth has to be global warming.
Activist Groups Back Obama’s Budget
03/20/2009
A laundry list of Virginia activist groups are coming together to support President Barack Obama’s budget.
Jewel Royal is one of those supporters. She works at a Virginia nursing home as a certified nurse’s assistant. She hurt her back on the job and doesn’t have insurance.
"I have no medical coverage," she said in an interview. "I have a bunch of bills, a bunch of doctor bills."
So Royal is lobbying for the president’s proposed budget, which includes money to help people in her situation. She’s part of a growing list of Virginia advocacy groups pushing Congress to vote for the Obama spending plan.
Energy Department has a lot riding on it
02/18/2009
Describing Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s new job is simple: Oversee the transformation of the United States from a carbon-based economy to one based on clean energy.
Pulling it off, however, will be a little more challenging. It will be a massive undertaking, if it can be done at all — bigger than the Manhattan Project that split the atom and the Apollo program that put man on the moon. Combined.
Global Warming News
Earth warming faster
04/08/2009
Global warming is likely to overshoot a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) rise seen by the European Union and many developing nations as a trigger for "dangerous" change, a Reuters poll of scientists showed on Tuesday.
Nine of 11 experts, who were among authors of the final summary by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 (IPCC), also said the evidence that mankind was to blame for climate change had grown stronger in the past two years.
An Antarctic ice shelf has disappeared
04/04/2009
One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.
They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.
Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey
Climate clock is ticking
04/04/2009
For most people, news of the ice melt was little more than a distant curiosity. But for climate scientists it was the scariest thing they had seen yet, and what’s more it had caught them completely by surprise.
In the summer of 2007, a large portion of Arctic Sea ice – about 40 per cent – simply vanished. That wasn’t supposed to happen. At least not yet. As recent as 2004, scientists had predicted it would take another 50 to 100 years for that much ice to melt. Yet here it was happening today.
It raised the question: Had global warming suddenly pressed the gas pedal to the floor?
Press Releases
New CBO Deficit Projections Signal U.S. Economy in Even Worse Shape Than Previously Thought
03/20/2009
Americans United for Change, which is helping lead a major national campaign to pass President Obama’s historic budget plan along with nearly 100 leading labor, environmental and progressive organizations, issued the following statement today in response to alarming new figures from the Congressional Budget Office that project a substantially higher federal deficit than previously estimated.
Tom McMahon, Acting Executive Director, Americans United for Change: "The sobering new deficit projections deliver a stark message that the economy is in even worse shape than was previously thought. It also underscores the urgent need to pass the bold initiatives on healthcare, education, energy and the economy laid out the President’s budget."
Leaders from Green For All and Apollo Alliance to Speak at “Green Today, Jobs Tomorrow”
01/26/2009
Michigan Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth Director Stanley “Skip” Pruss announced today that the author of The Green Collar Economy as well as a co-director of Apollo Alliance, of Washington, D.C., have accepted invitations to speak at the “Green Today, Jobs Tomorrow” conference scheduled for May 11th at the Lansing Center.
Sunshine into Electricity: Affordable Renewable Energy
01/12/2009
Event Details: The White River Group of the Sierra Club invites the public to attend “Sunshine Into Electricity: Affordable Renewable Energy” at its Jan. 13 meeting at 7 p.m. at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center. Refreshments and networking begin at 6:30 p.m.
Access to clean, renewable energy to power our homes is a key component of a sustainable lifestyle.
Newsletters
Adhering to clean energy standards
12/05/2008
Our civilization is hopelessly chained to the corporate elite, corrupt leadership of unstable states and a bureaucracy that has been unable to bring about change. While we might pretend to think that we are in charge of the economy, power still remains largely in the hands of an elite few. The executives that lead the world’s major oil companies are constant reminders of this fact.
President-elect Barack Obama’s recent cruise to the White House seems to have put wind back in sails of the renewable energy sector. Obama has promised to invest some $150 billion over 10 years in renewable resources as part of a wider plan to increase U.S. energy security amid fear of oil shortages, while also decreasing the country’s carbon emissions in an attempt to confront the problem of global warming.
U.S. must move toward clean energy
11/18/2008
It’s clear to see that the world needs to end its dependence on foreign fuels. The Repower America Campaign can work with the government on using 100 percent clean energy by a set date. I think it would be extremely beneficial to the readers of your newspaper to learn an outline for the future, and to bond together and strive for a cleaner future for their children, and my generation.
Heinz Talks discuss climate change and energy policies
10/27/2008
As the United States presidential election approaches, Americans are reminded of two important issues that the next president of the United States will face: the energy situation and global climate change.
To address this issue, “Heinz Talks: Climate Change and Energy Policy — Advice to Our Next President” was held Monday, Oct. 20, at Carnegie Mellon’s Mellon Institute.