According to this article in Scientific American called What Rural Alaska Can Teach the World about Renewable Energy, “Remote communities have integrated renewables into their diesel-based power grids with more success than anywhere else.” (more…)
Here’s a short, readable article with terrific graphics in the New England Journal of Medicine that makes a number of important points, all centering around a single idea: building public policy around actual science is a really good idea. Case in point: by identifying pollutants and pointing the way to reducing their concentrations in our air and water, the EPA has, through both Republican and Democratic administrations spanning almost half a century, created a much healthier nation of people than would have resulted in its absence. (more…)
My colleague Jon LeSage writes in his Green Auto Digest: The Trump administration is keeping the president’s campaign promises supporting fossil fuels and pushing back on clean energy and efficient, clean transport. The State Department’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline last week raised hackles further for many. (more…)
2GreenEnergy frequent commenter and all-around cool guy Brian McGowan sent me this article on the push-back that residential solar users in Northern Texas are receiving from their power utility. I respond:
Well, at a certain level, all this is business as usual for a power utility: fighting to protect its profits, which means convincing the PUC that this fee is both fair and required. (And based on the article, I’m happy to see that this isn’t going to be a piece of cake.) (more…)
I wish there were a way to spin this article in Forbes as exciting “new news,” but it’s been totally obvious now for several years: the plummeting costs of solar and wind energy is in the process of making everything else increasingly difficult to justify financially. This, of course, is why: (more…)
Your HVAC system is all the combined infrastructure and machinery that heats, cools and ventilates your home. HVAC stands for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Most homeowners do not think about it, but there are actually rules of mathematics and physics that go into designing an efficient home HVAC system. If you have cold and warm spots in your home in both summer and winter months that are not desired and if your energy bills are higher than your neighbors with similar home types, then your HVAC may be an energy waster. Here are five signs to tell. (more…)
Soon after the inception of 2GreenEnergy in 2009, my brother asked me why Big Oil doesn’t diversify into renewables. I replied that it was a matter of core competencies; there are few if any synergies between oil exploration and the technology associated with things like solar and wind. Then along comes the large-scale of offshore wind, proving me completely wrong (I’m happy to report). (more…)
Here’s an article that outlines the reasons behind the rapid decline in the generation of electricity from coal-fired power plants. As predicted, it’s the basic economics, i.e., the costs associated with running coal plants in competition against natural gas and increasingly, renewable energy. (more…)
Warming waters associated with climate change have had horrific effects on the biochemistry of our oceans, and in no case is this more evident than the Arabian Sea south of Pakistan, and separating India from the Middle East and Africa. Each year, according to this article in the Washington Post, an ever-growing algal bloom the size of Mexico turns this huge body of water into something the color and consistency of guacamole, paralyzing fish be clogging their gills, and killing aquatic animals of all types by robbing them of oxygen. (more…)
Some people believe that cuts in public spending benefit our country by decreasing the national debt, and, of course, this notion is not entirely false. But what about cutting tiny areas of the budget that have extremely important long-term contributions, both in terms of quality of life, (e.g., curing cancer) and the health of the economy as a whole? (more…)
