Environment

(By Zachary Shahan) Europe’s Fossil Fuel Exit — 30% Of Fossil Fuel Power Capacity To Close By 2017, UBS Analysts Project (via Clean Technica) Following up on a Credit Suisse report stating that ~85% of US energy demand growth would come from renewables by 2025, we thought it would be good to take a look […]

Climate Change

Australia burns, swelters in Hottest Year on Record (Climate Instability Story of the Day)

contributors

(By AFP) Australia endures hottest year on record (via AFP) Australia experienced its hottest year on record in 2013, the Bureau of Meteorology said Friday, enduring the longest heatwave ever recorded Down Under as well as destructive bushfires. “2013 was Australia’s warmest year since records began in 1910,”… ITN reports

Climate Change

Solar Ascendancy: Minnesota Court Ruling for Solar over Gas a Harbinger of Things to Come

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Minnesota Judge Eric Lipman found that solar is a better deal than natural gas for Xcel Energy, permitting Geronimo Energy to construct 20 huge solar facilities worth $250 million in Xcel’s service area in that state. The amount of solar power in the state would increase by a factor of 7. The […]

Environment

EPA finally catches a Fracking polluter in the Act, levies Largest ever Civil Penalties

contributors

(By Tina Casey) US EPA Nails Fracker With Record Fine (via Clean Technica) The woes just keep piling up for Chesapeake Energy. The company is front and center in the nation’s natural gas fracking boom and it just got hit with one of the largest ever civil penalties for violating Section 404 of the Clean […]

Africa

Ethiopia aims to become Africa’s Green Energy Giant

Juan Cole

Ethiopia intends to increase its power generation from 2000 megawatts to 10,000 MW. That goal is not unusual for a developing country. What is distinctive is that its government wants to achieve as much as possible of this increase in power through green energy (hydro, wind, solar and geothermal). AFP reports on “Ethiopia spearheads green […]

Climate Change

Locusts & Climate Change Plague Yemen on top of al-Qaeda, Drones, Huthis (Video of the Day)

Juan Cole

Yemen has suffered flash floods and unusual amounts of rainfall recently. These phenomena are not new, but they may be increasing because of climate change, which increases water vapor in the atmosphere. Locusts flourish in wetter top soil. Yemen is an agricultural society and much of the population is food insecure to begin with. Climate […]

Climate Change

Birth of Hope: Top Ten Solar Energy Stories 2013

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The story of a doomed race who need to be saved by a messiah is on people’s minds today. It functions at a spiritual level. There is an analogous story at the physical level. Humankind is facing the biggest crisis in its 120,000-year-long existence, the physical equivalent of original sin. It is […]

Climate Change

Climate Denialists Spending Billions in untraceable Dark Money to fool the Public

contributors

(By Lauren McCauley) The expansive misinformation campaign behind climate change denial is increasingly being funded in the dark, reveals a new report published Friday in the journal Climatic Change According to the study titled "Institutionalizing Delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations," while the largest and most consistent funders of […]

Climate Change

Scotland is going 100% Green by 2020; shame on Dirty America

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Glasgow is the city of the future, not Phoenix. Scotland has a population of about 5.3 million, a little more than the US state of Arizona. But the resemblance stops there. Arizona’s state government is backward-looking, roiled by racial politics, contemptuous of higher education, and a climate laggard, dirtying up the atmosphere […]