A cool new way to get hydro power right under our cities, and they don't require dams.
The Lucid system taps the power of gravity in the city’s water system. Water flowing through the Portland Water Bureau pipe at 147th and Powell will now flow through four small turbines as well, generating enough electricity to power 150 homes along the way. The turbines are 3.5 feet wide – just big enough to span the diameter of the city’s water pipe.
Interesting new website (in beta) that gives a visual story of each countries emissions reduction targets. It includes both domestic fair share as well as embedded export emissions. I like how it begins with equity considerations. This quote caught my eye:
We demand action from everyone, but we don’t believe that everyone is equally responsible for the crisis.
CEO of Murray Energy fires coal workers after Obama's reelection. Job destroy, not job creator.
Anyway, the coal industry is in decline, not because of Obama, but because of cheap natural gas. That's the real story.
Presidential debates do not determine actual policy, but they do set conversation agendas. After three debates this year, global climate change was not mentioned once. It's increasingly clear that the US political machine is incapable at this time to address the threats posed by climate change. Global climate change is not even on the conversation agenda.
Further, the US political elite have zero coherence on matters of an energy transition. Striking evidence of this fact is that typically celebrated capitalist entrepreneurialism, in the form of renewable, green energy technology companies, are openly ridiculed and lambasted by right-wing pundits and politicians. Yes, some of these companies received government loans and subsidies, and yes a few of them failed, but almost all US businesses benefit form direct and indirect subsidies (roads, highways, tax codes, etc).
Global climate change is a dead policy issue in Washington, but the end around energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is also so politicized that no policy coherence seems possible. The nascent US wind turbine industry is poised to collapse if congress doesn't renew subsidies for the industry. Contrary to the ahistorical accounts from pundits and politicians, all energy transitions involved policy guided capitalism (see English industrial revolution, or US automobile, oil boom).
Sadly, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson is probably right, in 200 years our period will be known as the Great Dithering.
I won't give away David Roberts' punchline, read the article, but I'll start you with this:
Just as a cleaner electricity system would be preferable, so too would a more small-d democratic system, one that distributes economic and social power more widely.
President Obama signed an Executive Order "Accelerating Investment in Industrial Energy Efficiency", which comes on the heals of new improved car fuel efficiency standars for 2025.
Meanwhile, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney turned climate change into a punch line during his acceptance speech as the RNC:
Obama has been pretty good about promoting new energy sources, green tech, and efficiency, not so good on climate change however. Romney, on the other hand, represents old, dirty energy production. Gas, coal, oil. No eye for the future, whether new energy sources or climate change.
Bill to ban sustainability action fails in Arizona, reports Maria Gallucci at Inside Climate News.
Sometimes geographic uneven development is a political and cultural decision. Arizona and the other states that are attempting to block renewable energy money and investment are feeding uneven development in the US. How? Some states will benefit from these developments (West and North East, Texas), while other states will be cut out of future rewards, and hence fall behind. Uneven development. It's very short sighted, and a dangerous politics. At least it failed this time.
Think tank warns of turbulent outlook for US renewable energy industry
The recent rapid expansion of the US renewable energy sector could be thrown into reverse unless policy makers take urgent steps to reform subsidy regimes which have delivered a cycle of "boom and bust" that could yet result in a "clean tech crash".
The real problem for nascent markets: being crushed by the incumbent market. In this case, the fossil fuel industry, and all the subsidies, direct and indirect, that the incumbents receive from the government.