Guest Blogger Ken Alex: Big Data and the Renewable Revolution
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. Earlier this year, UCLA’s Center for Sustainable Communities launched an interactive energy map for energy use in most of Los Angeles. It was a long time in coming. The LA Department of Water and Power provided UCLA with substantial amounts of data about energy use, which UCLA then combined ...
CONTINUE READINGProtecting the Safety of Food Imports
Food safety, particularly for imported foods, is a serious problems. Help is on the way -- but slowly, very slowly. According to the NY Times: About 15 percent of food that Americans eat comes from abroad, more than double what it was just 10 years ago, including nearly two-thirds of fresh fruits and vegetables. And the safety of the food supply — foreign and domestic — is a critical public health issue. One in every six Americans becomes ill from eating contamina...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Saving Electricity for a Rainy Day
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. We are making progress in two more key areas, although California, for now, is not in the lead. Thanks to new developments and a key PUC proceeding, California will once again push the country forward on electrical storage. We are also moving forward on the broader category of demand response,...
CONTINUE READINGAdapting to Increased Hurricane Risk
The WSJ reports that people in the Northeast are waking up and taking the same preparation steps that people in the Southeast have taken for decades to prepare for hurricanes. Such defensive expenditures help to stimulate our sluggish economy (I've read my Keynes) and shield the populace from the next disaster shock. "Zevan Cohen, a 40-year-old in Millburn, N.J., had an electrician install a $1,200 generator in his home last week. He lived through Irene in August 2011...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: An EV in Every Garage
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. Four years ago, the number of electric vehicles on California roads was pretty close to zero. At the end of this year, it will be about 50,000. OK, compared to the totals, that’s not much. There are about 32 million vehicles in California (and 230 million in the U.S. and over 1 billion in ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Congressional Back Door Attack on California’s Environmental Programs
California's Environmental Programs
Today's Los Angeles Times reports on disturbing, broad-based efforts in Congress that threaten to eviscerate a host of California's cutting-edge environmental initiatives, most prominently its "Green Chemistry" program. The saga begins with the California Legislature's enactment of the state's "Green Chemistry Initiative" (GCI) in 2008. The overarching principle behind GCI is to mandate the design of chemical products and processes in a way that reduces or eliminat...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Climate Science and Public Belief
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. In the book Collapse, Professor Jared Diamond asks, why do societies destroy themselves through disastrous decisions, even after they perceive the problem? Why, for example, did the denizens of Easter Island keep cutting down trees when they could not reforest? Diamond offers a series of answe...
CONTINUE READINGCongress and Energy Efficiency – The Tentative Steps of Shaheen-Portman
Senators Shaheen and Portman have created a bi-partisan bill to promote more efficient use of energy. It appears that they might succeed in getting it through the Senate, but the resulting bill would be missing most of its teeth. Is a toothless tiger better than no tiger at all? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer may be yes. Energy efficiency improvements benefit just about everyone, with the possible exception of the companies that want to sell us more energy. More effic...
CONTINUE READINGBenevolent Paternalism or “Tough Love”?: Two Approaches for Adapting to Climate Change
Homeowners in coastal Queens, NY are outraged that their home insurance rates are going to rise sharply. Some are threatening not to buy such insurance. Such individuals must be betting that they will be "too big to fail" and that some future benevolent government official will bail them out with FEMA $ when the next Hurricane Sandy knocks out their homes. If you bet on the Superbowl, you bet with your own $. What is the difference between buying a coastal home ...
CONTINUE READINGTexas’s Unsuccessful (And Self-Defeating) Defiance of EPA
Texas has lost another round of its battle to halt EPA regulation of greenhouse gases -- this time involving its effort to drag its feet on implementation of the regulations even if it could not undo them. The effect of Texas's action is that it lost the ability to help shape how the rules apply to Texas industry, instead handing additional power to EPA. In the Wild West, this was called shooting yourself in the foot. The issue related to rules for permits for greenho...
CONTINUE READING