According to pick your favorite cleantech and carbon media outlet, California is at war. AB 32 is California’s carbon cap and trade law. The law is most the way ready to implement, with the rulemaking in process now. It’s aimed squarely at two goals, one, reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions, and two, since such a [...]
It’s been a big week in Greenhouse Gas regulation land. Huge boost for cleantech sales executives and afficianados everywhere. EPA announces a slightly delayed and somewhat more limited GHG regulation rule. Starting in July 2011, all facilities greater than 75,000 tons per year in emissions will have to get GHG permits. And John Kerry and Joe [...]
Thomas Friedman, one of my favorite authors, had an editorial this week entitled, “America must lead in energy technology“. As with most of his recent writings and speeches, it’s targeted around the thesis of his Hot, Flat and Crowded book, which basically argues that a combination of climate change, globalization, and population growth are creating [...]
In the run up to Copenhagen and the debate over Waxman-Markey, I think it’s worth laying out some of the key debating points on how cap and trade works and why it’s been our weapon of choice to date in the climate change fight. I like to think of our carbon and energy problem as [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi You heard it here first: the energy consultancy Douglas-Westwood is claiming in a May 11 white paper that “peak oil” may have already happened, as far back as October 2004, and that the oil price boom followed by economic collapse is indicative of how things will play out over the decades [...]
A couple of days ago the Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote about his Senate testimony on cap and trade revenue redistribution on his blog late last week. Worth a quick read, the main text below. The full 28 page testimony is linked in his note. It’s worth noting that the homepage of the [...]
This seems like something out of a James Bond movie. There is a startup, Solaren, which is trying to build panels in space that converts sunlight into a radio frequency beam aimed at a receiving station near Fresno. The station then converts the radio waves into electricity. Megan Treacy at EcoGeek says: “If everything goes [...]
By Marc Stuart Secretary Clinton’s weeklong trip to Asia was notable for a number of firsts. The first time a new Secretary of State of a new administration has opened her tenure by flying west, rather than east. Well, George Schultz apparently went south, as the exception that proves the rule. It’s also the first [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Generalizations are always tricky, but it’s safe to say that many employees of many electric utilities whose generation plants are mainly coal-fired have a hard time feeling very enthusiastic about renewable energy. You can imagine the rants: renewables are tiny and negligible, renewables aren’t baseload, renewables are for wimps. So, it’s [...]
Those of you that know me know that fighting climate change is an issue near and dear to my heart – and day to day life, since I am currently involved with a start up working on helping to deliver even better transparency and environmental integrity to carbon credits. So as a small government, energy [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi In early June, the U.S. Senate considered the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191), which proposed the establishment of a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions, analogous to the cap-and-trade program in place in the U.S. for acid rain pollutants since the mid-1990′s. Predictably, the bill was defeated, before even going to [...]
Most Americans now agree that something needs to be done to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully most Americans now appreciate that this is not a small, but even more so, not a simple problem. I am a big believer that the playing field for our low carbon future should start level, and the market [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi For a long time, I have been assuming that U.S. regulations to reduce carbon emissions, when they come, will be in the form of a cap-and-trade program, similar to what is in place in the U.S. for limiting sulfur dioxide emissions. Even though a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions is probably [...]
