Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists and Economists Call on Senate to Address Climate Change Now: Nobel Prize-winning economists and scientists will deliver a letter to the U.S. Senate today, urging lawmakers to require immediate cuts in global warming emissions. The letter was signed by more than 2,000 prominent U.S. economists and climate scientists, including eight Nobel laureates, 32 National Academy of Sciences members, 11 MacArthur “genius award” winners, and three National Medal of Science recipients. “The nation’s leading scientists and economists have joined together to tell policymakers we agree about the urgency of addressing climate change now,” said James McCarthy, one of the letter’s organizers and a biological oceanography professor at Harvard University. “The bad news is the science of climate change is indisputable. The good news is we can cost-effectively cut the emissions that are causing it.” McCarthy is a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) board, and a leader of the Nobel Peace Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The longer the United ... read more >>
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Ah, Home Star – the legislative proposal that has eaten all my time over the last six months. What more is there to say? Creates jobs!…Slashes energy use!…Saves money! All of that was said today and more, during a hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Congressional Research Service, the Department of Energy, and a collection of business, utility, and state advocates all testified today along those lines. Home Star is a $6 billion proposal that would create incentives for homeowners who choose to make their homes more efficient. Silver Star would offer rebates for individual measures like insulating your attic or installing an efficient new furnace (capped at $3,000 but always requiring at least a 50 percent match from homeowners), while Gold Star creates a performance path where the homeowner and their contractor figure out what measures to undertake, and the size of the incentive is determined by the percent improvement of the home’s efficiency. Gold Star incentives start at $3,000 for a 20 percent improvement and go up $1,000 for each additional 5 percent from there From the hearing, it sounds like we all ... read more >>
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In this, the fifth of my Smart Grid Heavy Hitters’ interviews, I talk to the CEO of Tropos Networks, Tom Ayers. Tropos develop wireless broadband networks for Smart Grid applications and offer complete network management, as well as enhanced security features. Tropos is the only wireless broadband network provider with FIPS 140-2 certification. Tom and I had a great chat, we talked about: - Tom and Tropos’ definition and the benefits of a Smart Grid...
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A familiar face in the climate movement - and a major partner behind the TckTckTck campaign - Bill McKibben last week wrote a great in-depth article comparing the OJ Simpson trials in the 90's to the current relentless attacks on climate science by entrenched fossil fuel and flat earth types. The analogy is drawn due to the way OJ's trial lawyers - some of the best in the world - distracted attention from the obvious facts showing guilt, to the way those facts were gathered by law enforcement agencies. From the piece: "The Dream Team of lawyers assembled for Simpson’s defense had a problem: it was pretty clear their guy was guilty. Nicole Brown’s blood was all over his socks, and that was just the beginning. So Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian et al. decided to attack the process, arguing that it put Simpson’s guilt in doubt, and doubt, of course, was all they needed.." And, "Similarly, the immense pile of evidence now proving the science of global warming beyond any reasonable doubt... read more >>
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 Check out this story of mine in MIT Technology Review about Sundrop Fuels, a Colorado startup that’s trying to commercialize a process that uses the sun to gasify biomass, instead of burning a portion of the biomass itself to drive the gasification process. The technology is based on research carried out at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with help from NREL. The company believes the syngas from its process can be produced affordably in high enough quanity and quality that it could be refined into gasoline for less than $2 a gallon. One obvious hitch is the fact that the best place to harness and concentrate solar heat is in the U.S. Southwest — not exactly the place you’d go to look for surplus biomass resources. BTW: Sundrop is operating largely in stealth mode, and counts Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as one of its venture backers.
On the topic of solar, Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program is gaining momentum. On Wednesday the province’s power authority announced the latest batch of projects to be approved under the program — these ones in the 10 kw to 500 kw range. A few surprises: Loblaw Group of Companies, the grocery giant, has applied to have 136 of its stores .. ... read more >>
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In an oh-so-reasonable-sounding article on Slate, Daniel Sarewitz argues the contrary of the position I have been taking recently. My position is first, that science can no longer depend on the press, or the institutional press office, or pop science media to get important messages out. That much has become blazingly obvious. Second, that certain messages of science are necessary to sound governance, that science is a crucial component of collective decision making in modern society. As a conclusion, it is necessary for science as a culture to participate directly in public communication. It may not be possible for science as an institution to do so. Consequently science as a culture may need to create new institutions and certainly new career paths to more effectively participate in consequential public discourse. You would think that would be blazingly obvious too, but Sarewitz makes an argument that inclines pretty strongly to the contrary. Not to put words in his mouth, his thesis is A dangerous idea has taken hold in modern politics, and the sooner it is discredited, the better. The idea is that political disagreements can be resolved by science. Its basic logic ... read more >>
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“PACE” stands for “Property Assessed Clean Energy.” It is a financing tool through which cities sell bonds and then loan the proceeds to property owners to improve building energy efficiency. The loans are repaid via a dedicated taxing mechanism. A Milken Institute event on PACE financing described it in more detail: In the PACE framework, cities and counties form financing districts that could issue bonds to provide financing for residential and commercial property owners to voluntarily retrofit buildings and make improvements such as installing solar, wind or geothermal energy systems. Property owners would repay the loans over 20 years through a special property assessment, with the paper secured by a super-senior position, much like any property tax. Up-front costs for owners are dramatically reduced, which improves return on investment and the internal rate of return and doesn’t discourage them from opting in. One bit of legal uncertainty surrounding PACE proposals is in that super-senior position. Since the loan would become attached to a property that frequently is already mortgaged, in the case of default lenders become very concerned with who ... read more >>
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The US Department of Energy granted a US$1.37 billion loan guarantee to Brightsource Energy last week which could help clear the way for over 15 gigawatts of solar thermal power projects in California. Brightsource built a pilot plant in Israel to prove their technology and has tested it over the past 18 months. Their flagship Ivanpah project in California got a big boost when construction giant Bechtel agreed to build the plant. Solar thermal (often referred to as CSP) is a way of harnessing the largest source of energy available to us, so in this post I'll have a look at the upswing in interest in the technology in recent years and look at some of the approaches being pursued to make it economically competitive with coal fired power generation. 
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/ One-time Australian solar thermal company Ausra was the leader in terms of publicity a couple of years ago when I last covered this topic, but the company seems to have slipped off the pace, failing to build a large scale facility and recently being purchased by French energy company Areva. Interest continues to bubble away in solar thermal power in Australia, with ... read more >>
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 As reported earlier on BNC, Dr James Hansen is currently in Australia (I had the pleasure of taking him out to dinner yesterday evening). Tonight he’ll be speaking on climate change and energy solutions at a public event at the Adelaide Convention Centre. There is still time to reserve a ticket and come along — please go here to book.
It’s also good to see a couple of news stories appearing in today’s media, which are worth reading (James Hansen keen on next-generation nuclear power and ‘Father of global warming’ to speak in Adelaide), as well as an opinion editorial published in The Australian, which Jim wrote whilst here in Adelaide (I reproduce it below). This Op Ed has direct bearing on what he’ll be talking about tonight at the event “After Copenhagen: Looking for real solutions“, and relates to material published earlier on BNC on the fee-and-dividend alternative to a cap-and-trade. Its message also ties strongly to a general thrust of this climate-energy blog, i.e., ensuring that nuclear power is available and able to compete fairly with other non-fossil-fuel technologies, on a ‘level playing field’, so as to maximise our chances of achieving effective emissions ... read more >>
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