EcocentricUncategorized
On Sunday, over 17,000 people took to the streets of Tokyo to let their government know they’ve had it with nuclear power. It was an unusual display of mass disgruntlement in the Japanese capital, but these are unusual times. Residents walked through the neighborhood of Koenji – reportedly the birthplace of Japanese punk – with …
EcocentricEnergy
It’s good news for solar advocates and bad news for competitors—General Electric is ready to break into the solar cell business in a major way. The $218 billion company announced today that it had built a solar module with the highest-ever efficiency rate for cadmium-telluride thin film—the most popular low-cost solar technology—at …
EcocentricPolitics
A lot of attention has focused on how Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s support for health care reform might have helped made her a target. (On Monday Giffords was still in a medically induced coma after being shot in the head Saturday morning in Tucson.) Her office in Tucson was vandalized last March after she voted in …
EcocentricPolitics
Amid all the political agony over the tax compromise taking shape in Congress right now there are side measures that could be incredibly important for renewable energy in the U.S. The final bill is obviously still evolving, but the compromise agreed to by Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell contains a few provisions that will …
EcocentricEnergy
Update (8/14/10): A few additional voices in this argument. Over at his blog for the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Levi argues that government investment in research isn’t enough on its own to bring clean energy to parity with fossil-fuel power, in part because unlike previous innovations like the Internet, clean energy doesn’t …
EcocentricPolitics
Back in 1979—when the economy was suffering and the U.S. was facing a serious energy crisis, a situation in no way similar to what’s happening now—President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. It was a symbol of Carter’s push to get the U.S. to face up to its energy problems, beginning with the most …
EcocentricRegulation
EcocentricTechnology
A little light post for weekend reading. Science magazine has published a special news section on the alternative energy challenge, casting a sober eye on the difficulties—and oppourunities—of leaving behind the age of fossil fuels and scaling up green power. Usually Science studies are behind a paywall (hmm, sounds familiar), but …
EcocentricPolitics
This afternoon, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi called them back from their six-week summer break, members of the House of Representatives passed an emergency $26 billion spending bill to prevent the layoff of 300,000 teachers, police and other civil servants from layoffs due to state cutbacks. The bill passed
EcocentricEcocentric
A carbon cap now seems to be beyond the greenest dreams of environmentalists, but is it possible that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid’s energy bill will be more than just oil spill measures? It could happen. Though Reid had said last week that he wouldn’t be able to include a renewable energy standard (RES) in his bill—mandating …
