energy efficiency

Electric Shared Mobility:

Program Design Elements Can Produce More Equitable, Durable, and Successful Projects

Shared mobility—an umbrella term for any transportation mode shared among multiple passengers—has the potential to accelerate transportation electrification, air quality, and greenhouse gas reduction goals, meet the needs of underserved communities that most lack mobility access, and advance broader mobility equity goals. CLEE’s report, Electric Shared Mobility: California Lessons Learned for Equity in Program Design, …

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Luminosity

The story behind today’s energy efficient lighting and a forgotten episode in the culture wars.

The conservative fight to save an obsolete lighting technology – the incandescent bulb — has something to tell us about current environmental disputes and the nature of culture wars.

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What’s Been Killing U.S. Coal?

No, it’s not Biden. Or EPA. The culprits are supply and demand.

From 1960 to 2005, coal use grew more or less steadily by 18 million  tons per year. It then tread water for a few years and began a steep decline in 2008, going from half of U.S. electricity to about one-fifth today.  What happened in the middle of the Bush Administration to halt growth? And …

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California must move more quickly to decarbonize existing residential buildings

New Report recommends scaling California’s Go Green financing program faster, changing program design and implementation

California has set ambitious climate goals, which include reducing state greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 40 percent by 2030 and reducing GHGs 85 percent (and achieving statewide carbon neutrality) by 2045. Amongst all the sectors state leaders seek to address, existing buildings (which are responsible for over 10 percent of state emissions), and especially existing residential …

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A Celebration of Energy Efficiency?

A different perspective on a familiar holiday.

When you think about it, the Hanukkah story is, in a funny way, about a miraculous increase in energy efficiency.  An energy resource (olive oil) that was supposed to supply only enough energy for one night’s worth of light was able to supply light for eight nights. That’s an eightfold improvement in energy efficiency, akin …

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A Stealth Climate Bill

There’s more money for climate action tucked away in a must-pass bill.

Surprise! The lame-duck Congress is about to consider another bill with billions of dollars of spending for climate adaptation and emission reductions. Another surprise: the bill is named for Senator James Inhofe. In case you’ve forgotten, he’s the climate change denier who once took a snowball to the Senate floor to disprove climate change. You …

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Making Heat Pumps Accessible and Affordable to Decarbonize Buildings

New policy report on solutions to improve deployment of heat pump technologies in existing buildings | Webinar July 19

Join us for a webinar to discuss the report findings with leaders on July 19 at 1 pm PT. RSVP here You may have seen heat pumps (or #heatpumpnation) in the news recently and wondered, what really is this device? How do heat pumps relate to building decarbonization goals, national security, and climate mitigation efforts? …

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What’s in the Reconciliation Bill?

The House takes an important step toward transforming the energy system

Last Friday, the House passed its version of the Build Back Better Act. Due to a quirk in parliamentary procedure, the Senate will be able to consider the $1.7 trillion bill under the “reconciliation” process, which means no filibuster is allowed. It remains unclear whether anyone can wrangle all fifty Senators into supporting some version …

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Top 10 Biggest Environmental Wins In California’s History

Ranking the victories that saved priceless landscapes and environmental features

California is generally known as an environmental leader, but the state has also faced tremendous environmental degradation and destruction. I chronicled my “top 10” worst environmental decisions in the state’s history last year. But what about the good things state policy makers have done? Here is my list of the most significant environmental wins in …

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New Report: Improving Access to Energy Data

Policy solutions to support the data needed for resilient decarbonization

Today, the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at Berkeley Law and the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law are releasing a new report, Data Access for a Decarbonized Grid, which highlights key policy solutions to expand access to the energy data needed to operate a fully decarbonized …

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