Changing the Language of Renewable Energy, the Electric Monopoly’s Newest Ploy, by Nick Stumo-Langer Aug 18, 2016 What happens when utility companies lose ground as their customers cut consumption and seek innovative technologies like rooftop solar? New business ventures to capture customer interest? Other new technologies? Instead, investor-owned utilities (through the Edison Electric Institute trade organization) poured money into communications consultants, and the …
PACE explained
Cross-posted from ILSR A promising energy efficiency program could get closer to reaching its massive potential after a federal policy tweak that tempers lenders’ concerns to allow more homeowners to cash in. Variations of the Property Assessed Clean Energy program, better known as PACE, already exist in more than 30 states. Until now, the program has skewed mainly toward commercial …
State-of-the-art turbines could increase the US land suitable for wind development by 67 percent
By David Roberts, cross-posted from Vox. 21 Aug 2016. See link for the full article. Here’s a cool map. The dark blue is land where today’s most familiar, established turbines can achieve a minimum of 30 percent CF. Lighter blue areas are where the best of today’s turbines can do that. Orange is where state-of-the-art turbines can do it. (DOE) …
Scientist Peter Wadham’s Farewell to Ice, says we must act, dramatically, decisively and immediately, or our grandchildren pay full price, with our children impotent to help them
Cross-posted from The Guardian, 21 Aug 2016 Scientist Peter Wadham’s A Farewell to Ice proceeds methodically. Ice cores, tubes of compacted polar snow, record the last million years of atmospheric change, during which the Earth has oscillated between ice ages and warm periods. Now the pattern is breaking. “Our planet has changed colour. Today, from space, the top of the …
Contra Costa County GoMentum Station and AV
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY: GOMENTUM STATION POPULATION: 1.1 MILLION SQUARE MILES: 715 Contra Costa County, Calif., a suburban county of just over a million residents, is located in the Bay Area just east of San Francisco and north of Oakland. The Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) is the public agency in charge of managing the county’s transportation planning and congestion management. …
Greenville County Regional Personal Rapid Transit
GREENVILLE COUNTY: REGIONAL PERSONAL RAPID TRANSIT PRT systems are electric rail systems with small, ultralight podcars that operate on-demand 24/7 rather than on a set schedule. POPULATION: 482,000 SQUARE MILES: 785 Located about halfway between Atlanta and Charlotte on Interstate-85 in northwestern South Carolina, Greenville County is served by the Greenville-Pickens Area Transportation Study (GPATS)—the regional Metropolitan Planning Organization. This …
Chance of a do-over? Self-driving cars will improve our cities, if they don’t ruin them. Action needed!
By Robin Chase Ten years ago I found myself standing outside the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan. I looked out over acres of glinting windshields in a packed parking lot. I’d reached this spot by driving from Ann Arbor on the I-94, where the highway sometimes reaches 12 lanes across, in a little over an hour. Public transit …
Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones
Source: Uber. Uber’s modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicle. Near the end of 2014, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh on a mission: to hire dozens of the world’s experts in autonomous vehicles. The city is home to Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics department, which has produced many of the biggest names in the newly hot field. …
Global thinktanks recognise a fundamental shift in the balance of power is needed — a reshaping of what we tax and when we tax it
In the US alone, 53 million people – more than a third of the workforce – are freelance , with 43% of these being millennials. By Philip Inman, cross-posted from The Guardian Here’s a silver lining for the younger generation struggling to find a decent job, affordable home and a sense of security: many of the world’s most respected policy …
Unprecedented inequality between generations: Millennials have been the victims of a “30-year economic betrayal”
The Guardian finds that adults aged 20 to 24 in the United States have 31 percent less disposable income when adjusted for inflation relative to the same age group back in 1979. At the same time, the disposable incomes of adults aged 50 to 54 have actually increased by more than 32 percent. Put another way, the 20 to 24 age …