The role of government is to nurture the common good. Really. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution describes the role of government to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Therefore, isn’t it within…
The recently unveiled Clean Power Plan is way cool – it mandates replacing coal power plants with solar and wind based power systems. Supplanting the dirtiest of fossil fuels with the cleanest of renewable is a big move in the right direction. It won’t be easy, but it’s eminently doable.…
On Thursday, the US Energy Department announced $7.4 million in funding to four companies developing wave and tidal energy systems. This sort of technology uses objects placed in the ocean to capture energy from wave motion or the ebb-and-flow of tides, converting that energy to electricity. According to the Energy…
Remember a few years ago the “debate” over whether CO2 is pollution? With its announcement today of the “Clean Power Plan” the Obama Administration makes it clear that debate is over, and that action is required now rather than later. The plan calls for strict rules over CO2 emissions, and…
This week the two top stories of the Intersolar US 2015 trade show were – Tesla Motors CTO JB Straubl giving the Keynote address, giving the Solar industry fair warning the Solar City / Tesla Motors duo was planning to shake things up – and that in the previous 12…
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are taking off in a big way, in the U.S.A. That’s not just a claim by a random meme picture on Facebook, the latest Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reports say so. According to the recently-released “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy…
Tonight Tesla Motors announced what we’ve expected, but it’s a bigger deal than expected. Specifically, Tesla Motors is launching what’s essentially a new business unit, Tesla Energy, and positioning itself not as an automaker but as an “energy innovation company”. Tesla Energy’s product line is, initially, grid-tied energy storage units…
Breitbart.com wants us to think that Great Britain is going to freeze to death this winter because chasing after green energy sources has meant shuttering that country’s coal fired power plants. Without the guaranteed electricity of coal, GB is going to run out of electricity, and all heck will break…
At the intersection of smart grid services, on-site renewable energy generation, on-site grid energy storage, and electric cars, is the new energy energy model. I’ve recently written a few posts about the stone age energy model, where we burn things to create heat, motion or light. Most cars, trucks, etc…
The starting point of LongTailPipe is cars and the transportation system, looking at solutions to the transportation system’s negative environmental impact. We look at the full spectrum of impacts and solutions, even though we seem to focus on electric vehicles. That’s why the topic is sometimes fracking, and we’ll cover…
Are “we” doing too-little-too-late to fend off the crises caused by peak oil and climate change and the impacts both will have on the world economy, our food systems, and more? Looking at the level of resistance against clean energy technologies like electric vehicles, it’s easy for gloom and doom…
The NRDC has just released a report which demonstrates to the EPA how the U.S. could achieve aggressive climate change and carbon pollution reduction goals without costing very much to implement much less breaking the economy. The plan relies heavily on efficiency improvements, followed by renewable energy system deployments, and…
The US Energy Department announced on Thursday seventeen new projects, for $16 million total investment, to capture energy from waves, tides and currents. The goal is to increase America’s renewable energy portfolio, increase the power production and reliability of wave and tidal devices, and help gather valuable data on how…
When a big company signs an agreement to be a good environmental steward, we tend to think of greenwashing, that the company is just looking to paint themselves green and there’s no real depth to the commitment. Today, GM became the first automaker to sign on with the Climate Declaration…
