Energy

One More Try This Year for a National Renewable Electricity Standard

Is something, in terms of a federal renewable standard, better than nothing? There is new talk of setting a national renewable electricity standard before this session of Congress ends, due to the introduction of S.3813, this week. This Bingaman-sponsored bill echoes an earlier proposal that can best be described as imposing a standard of modest …

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Prop 23 and PG&E: Setting the Record Straight

The California Jobs Initiative is spreading a highly misleading story about PG&E’s opposition to Prop 23, the ballot measure to suspend California’s keystone climate legislation (AB 32).  The story appears in an email that they’ve circulated widely.  To make it easy to understand, I’m leaving the truthful parts of their story in black and putting …

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Will the Future Be “Made in China”?

America used to b a place where the future happened first. Now we seem to be fight any kind of change, whether the issue is immigration, health care, the financial system, or energy.

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And Caldron Bubble

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble. Or in this case, vast quantities of natural gas bubbled into the Gulf of Mexico: A vast majority of the natural gas that billowed out of BP PLC’s failed well in the Gulf this summer did not escape to the surface and atmosphere. Instead, the …

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The Top Ten Facts You Didn’t Know About Kochgate

10. Until the recent disclosures about funding for Proposition 23 in California, you probably hadn’t heard much about Koch Industries because it’s a family business, although it does $100 billion in sales per year. 9. Charles Koch co-founded the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank dedicated to saving companies like Koch from the horrors of …

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Prop 23 and Little Oil

Prop 23 is getting national attention, including a story in the NY Times: Charles and David Koch, the billionaires who have played a prominent role in financing the Tea Party movement, donated $1 million to the campaign to suspend the Global Warming Solutions Act enacted four years ago, and signaled that they are prepared to …

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Prop 23 and the Oil Companies

It is frequently said that “the oil companies” are financing Prop 23.  This turns out to be a bit of an overgeneralization.  According to Greenwire, While some companies are supporting Proposition 23, Shell Oil Co. opposes it, Chevron Corp. is officially neutral, Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC have decided not to get involved and …

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State AGs Ready to Attack Constitutionality of California’s AB 32

An important postscript to my earlier post regarding Berkeley Law’s/CLEE’s newly-published white paper on Proposition 23. That’s the California initiative measure that, if approved by voters this November, would suspend implementation of that state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, better known as AB 32. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the Attorneys General of Alabama, …

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Berkeley Law/CLEE Publish White Paper on Efforts to Suspend California’s AB 32

Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) has today published, “California at the Crossroads: Proposition 23, AB 32 and Climate Change.” This white paper is intended to provide an objective, non-partisan analysis of California Proposition 23, an initiative measure that will appear on California’s November 2nd general election ballot. If enacted, Proposition …

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Solar Power — More Reliable Than You Might Think

Wind and solar power are intermittent — we can rely on them to make power only when the wind blows or the sun shines.  And it can cost a lot (in terms of dollars and the environment) to fill in the gaps with conventional power sources.  That’s why the development of energy storage is so …

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