wind

Not The Winds Of Change We Wanted

Bombay’s recent air quality crisis shows us our future

For several years, India’s capital of Delhi has been synonymous with awful air quality: just living there is the equivalent of smoking nearly 2,000 cigarettes a year. So it shocked me when the Indian Express reported that last week, Bombay’s air was even worse than Delhi’s. Delhi’s AQI last week was an abysmal 263; but …

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Climate Action in the States

Climate progress continued despite Trump

Trump’s election in 2016 didn’t halt or even slow action in the states on renewable energy and climate change.  Things have hit “pause” during the pandemic, but that should be only temporary. All of this ferment at the state level should help lay the groundwork for future federal action.  Here’s what’s been happening in some …

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Good News From India

While we’ve been obsessing about Trump, India has made great strides in renewable energy.

We get so focused on the problems in our own country that it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening globally. It turns out that while we’ve been mired in our own travails, India has been making remarkableprogress on renewable energy. What happens in India has tremendous significance. It is now the most populous country …

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Guest Blogger David Spence: Why Some Electricity Markets Will Struggle With Decarbonization

David Spence is Professor of Law, Politics & Regulation at the University of Texas at Austin

Recently the New York Times published an article chronicling the financial problems experienced by one of the world’s premier developers of concentrated solar power (CSP) facilities. The financial headwinds facing CSP are a sign of a more fundamental problem electricity markets face: namely, capturing all of the important values we attach to electricity production. Most …

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Public Policy is Spurring Enormous Growth in the Windpower Industry – Don’t Stop Now

Worldwatch Institute reports that windpower capacity worldwide increased by 27,051 megawatts in 2008, bringing total installed capacity over 120,000 megawatts.  The United States showed the greatest growth, adding 8,358 megawatts to make a current total of 25,170 megawatts.  That’s a 50% increase in one year! The contribution that the U.S. windpower makes to overall domestic …

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Sharing the Burden of New Transmission Lines to The Sun and the Wind

The sense of urgency for building new electric transmission lines to transport large quantities of solar and wind power has spurred a national debate about the proper role for the federal government and the states in siting those lines.  Although land use decisions such as these usually reside in the states, many worry that states …

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