Nov 21, 09
U.S. and China Announce "Positive, Cooperative and Comprehensive" Plan for Collaboration on Clean Energy and Climate Change
"Very exciting day here in Beijing. There's enormous interest in both governments in working together to fight climate change. The package announced today is far-reaching and can make a real difference in cutting emissions." That's an exclusive quote from David Sandalow, DOE's Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs, who just emailed me from China about the newly announced U.S.-China cooperation plan. Sandalow is going to be in Copenhagen, so I hope to have...
The Cleantech Revolution Sweeps Through America
By Peter Madden and Polly Ghazi The wind of change is sweeping America – literally. Take Texas. Synonymous with the nation’s oil boom era, for the past century its wealth has been powered by gushing geysers and giant oil companies. But green gold is now competing with black, as Texas establishes itself as a powerhouse of wind energy. And the Lone Star State is not alone. During 2008, the US wind industry almost doubled in size, reaching 25,369MW, and passing Germany as the world...
High Entropy? Moi?
When I first came to Tokyo, fashionable parts of the city would be lined with hundreds of heavy taxis sitting in queues with their engines running, for hours on end. Every powered item was always on, 24/7. Tokyo Metropolitan Government has passed a law against idling cars - but this hall of mirrors atrium is a reminder that high entropy Tokyo will not disappear without a struggle. This picture is by way of context for my lecture yesterday at the International Design Symposium which was...
Wanted: Smart Workers for Smart Grid
Promise of a smart grid depend on trained workers. Early this week, President Obama gave a speech touting the $3.4 billion in grants the federal government has awarded to local companies, utilities and cities working to improve the country’s aging and outmoded electric energy grid. The awards will support “smart grid” technology that enables easier and more effective transmission of electricity from one region to another. One of the recipients is Pacific Northwest Generating...
India Summit Strives for Global Access to Climate-Friendly Technologies
Anna da Costa India hosted a high-level technology summit in Delhi last week with the aim of supporting progress toward a global agreement on "climate-friendly" technologies. Among the areas of consensus outlined in the summit's final statement, several governments expressed interest in a network of technology innovation centers. "The notion that we should have global centers for climate technology innovation is an important idea that has found its place in the...
U.S. Awards $3.4 Billion to Create a "Smart" Electric Grid
The Obama administration is awarding $3.4 billion in grants to modernize the national electric grid. One-hundred companies, utilities, manufacturers, and cities will receive the grants — ranging from $400,000 to $200 million — for projects that help build a “smart” grid that cuts energy costs, reduces blackouts, and has the capacity to deliver more wind and solar energy to American homes and businesses. Calling the nation’s grid system “dilapidated,” Carol Browner, the Obama...
Creating 1.7 Million Clean Energy Jobs to Drive Economic Recovery: The National Strategy and the Pennsylvania Opportunity
CAP Action’s Bracken Hendricks testified Friday before a Senate field hearing on job growth, tax incentives, and small business. I’m reprinting the full testimony below since he lays out the policy agenda as well as the benefits — nationally and for Pennsylvania. For details on the jobs analysis, see “New analysis shows how clean energy legislation will create 1.7 million jobs and opportunities for low-income families, including lower energy bills Thank you Senator...
New Report Finds 31 States Have The Renewable Resources To Be "Energy Self-Reliant"
A new report from the New Rules Project finds that over 60% of all U.S. states have the renewable energy resources to be “energy self-reliant.” (“Energy self-reliance,” as defined in the report, is a measure of how self-sufficient in energy generation a state could be if it relied entirely on its own renewable resources). The New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, released its findings last week. The report, “Energy Self-Reliant States: Second and...
Energy And Global Warming News For October 9: Granhom Brings 160,000 Clean Energy Jobs To Hard-Hit Michigan
The WashPost of course didn’t use my headline, since for them, every silver lining has a cloud. Obviously Michigan has had massive job losses in the auto industry, but how exactly does that translate into a “yellow light” for green jobs, except as a too-cute play on words at the expense of the real story: Granholm has done her best to embrace the fastest growing source of new jobs in the nation and the world — clean energy jobs. It’s hard to hold her...
Worldchanging Timeline: 2003-2009
We here at Worldchanging just celebrated our sixth anniversary! In addition to publishing a series of "101" posts, highlighting some of the iconic pieces we've published over the years, and a primer on blogs and other resources we lean heavily upon, we though that it might also be useful to share a timeline of the project so far, noting some representative events, to give the interested reader a sense of where we came from and how we got here; perhaps knowing something of the evolution of...
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