Tom Steyer, who spent $74 million on political races in 2014. He announced that for candidates to receive his support in 2016, they must offer policies that would lead the nation to generate half its electricity from clean sources by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who has made climate change the center of …
Carbon Taxes
As in California and nine Northeast states, CHINA: Market-based mechanisms are being used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in China. The central government’s 12th Five-Year Plan called for emission trading programs. Since 2013, seven carbon trading pilots have been established, while other jurisdictions are creating voluntary programs or scaling up their efforts in expectation of the launch of a nationwide …
Invest in grid flexibility: “Today’s grid limitations are mostly practical and solvable,” but “there’s no longer any time to waste”
Today’s electrical grids are often burdened with an excess of inflexible baseload plants, operating under rules that encourage their continued use and within markets that fail to properly price flexibility. Transitioning from today’s grids to more nimble, responsive grids with high levels of variable renewable energy (VRE) will require new policies from lawmakers and new technologies from innovators. In general, …
Economic Costs to Society Exceed Fossil Fuel Companies’ Profits and Spending
By next year, a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions will be priced in some way. Businesses that now emit carbon pollution for free (or cheap) will soon see their costs rise. In other words, carbon pollution is a business risk. It’s a bubble that’s going to pop, probably soon. The Carbon Tracker Initiative has popularized a term for this …
A Conservative Path Forward to Address Climate Change?
Last month, conservative North Carolina businessman Jay Faison launched a $175 million campaign to persuade Republicans to take climate change seriously. I didn’t think too much of it, but I recently came across the website for ClearPath, Faison’s nonprofit advocacy org, and it’s a really impressive piece of work — accessible but also deep, drawing on serious, nonpartisan sources like …