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As diplomatic confabs go, the 2015 Paris Climate Conference does not have much of a potential to do a lot of damage. That is remarkable considering that the War on Terror-torn capital of France is playing host to thousands of politicians, diplomats, businessmen, activists, and troublemakers, all of whom want to gain some sort of advantage out of the concept of climate change. The idea that human-caused global warming is going to cause a catastrophe unless the things people are doing to cause it are stopped is well accepted in the media and in certain government circles

Renewables for thee, but not for me California Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown believes that everyone needs to start using wind, solar and other “renewable” energy sources as soon as possible because, you know, the earth, man. California doesn’t need to be burning all kinds of oil and making bank for rich capitalists who own gigantic ranches with oil underneath them, ‘amiright’? Unless, of course, that ranch owner happens to be Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown! In that case, well, better find that oil! And that’s exactly what Gov. Moonbeam was hoping to do when he dispatched state employees, on the taxpayers’...

There is no renewables revolution in China A new study suggests air pollution is even worse than thought in China where pollution is sky-high everywhere. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the EPA either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half of the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America’s highest threshold. Berkeley’s Earth scientific director, Richard Muller, says breathing Beijing air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day. China emits more CO2 than the US and Canada put together—up 171%...

Apple CEO Tim Cook is joining the CEO Council for Sustainable Urbanization, a group formed by the Paulson Institute and the China Center for International Economic Exchanges in order to divert the environmental impact of China's urban growth. "Apple is committed to running our global operations on 100 percent renewable energy and we're working hard to reduce emissions throughout our global supply chain," Cook said in prepared statement from the Paulson Institute. "We look forward to participating in the CEO Council's effort to advance China's green transformation and hope to do our part in helping China reach its climate goals."

Abengoa, a renewable energy multinational company headquartered in Spain, has been a favorite of the Obama administration in getting federal tax money for clean energy projects. Since 2009, Abengoa and its subsidiaries, according to estimates, have received $2.9 billion in grants and loan guarantees through the Department of Energy to undertake solar projects in California and Arizona—as well as the construction of a cellulosic ethanol plant in Kansas. But in the space of less than a year, Abengoa’s financial health has become critical, leading investors to worry whether the company can survive. The company’s stock price on NASDAQ has swooned—from...

Power: In her latest campaign video on renewable energy, Hillary Clinton mocks Republican candidates for not facing the "reality" of global warming and the need to fight it. But it's her own energy plan that defies reality.

Replacing Fossil Fuels: Energy Evolution Has Happened Before If renewable energy replaces fossil fuels as our main source of energy it won't be the first time a fuel source was rapidly replaced. On the surface, energy seems like a pretty stagnant industry these days. Oil has dominated transportation for most of the last century while natural gas and coal provide a vast majority of the electricity we consume. That's not all that different than the way things were at the turn of the 20th century.But if you look at the overall energy mix over more than two centuries there's a...

The green energy movement in America is dead. May it rest in peace. No, a majority of American energy over the next 20 years is not going to come from windmills and solar panels. One important lesson to be learned from the green energy fad’s rapid and expensive demise is that central planning doesn’t work. What crushed green energy was the boom in shale oil and gas along with the steep decline in the price of fossil fuel that few saw coming just a few years ago.

Neither the science, the cost, nor the recent history of “renewable energy” provides a single good reason to force Americans to pay for this “green” failure. Imagine you wanted to get in your electric car and drive a considerable distance. It wouldn’t take long for your car to run out of power, so you would have to have another car, one using gasoline, to drive behind you to make sure you reached your destination. That’s a description of “renewable energy”, wind and solar, in America today because they both require backup from traditional energy sources such as coal, oil, natural...

There is never a good time for bad public policy. For few policies is this more evident than renewable energy mandates (REM), variously known as renewable portfolio standards, alternative energy standards and renewable energy standards. The first renewable energy mandate was adopted in 1983, but most states did not impose these mandates until the 2000s. Though the details vary from state to state, in general, renewable energy mandates require utilities to provide a certain percentage of the electric power they supply from “renewable” sources, notably wind and solar, with the required percentages rising over time. At the height of the...

Lockheed Martin, a recent Washington Post article notes, is getting into renewable energy, nuclear fusion, “sustainability” and even fish farming projects, to augment its reduced defense profits. The company plans to forge new ties with Defense Department and other Obama initiatives, based on a shared belief in manmade climate change as a critical security and planetary threat. It is charging ahead where other defense contractors have failed, confident that its expertise, lobbying skills and “socially responsible” commitment to preventing climate chaos will land it plentiful contracts and subsidies. As with its polar counterparts, 90% of the titanic climate funding iceberg...

The recent Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidation filing of the Toledo, Ohio-based solar-panel manufacturer Xunlight Corp. has attracted barely any national attention. Maybe it’s gotten to the point — after Solyndra, Evergreen, Abound, and Satcon — that the failure of another government-backed alternative energy company is a dog-bites-man story. It’d be newsworthy if any of them actually ever succeeded. But it’s worth pausing for an autopsy and retrospective on Xunlight, because it’s a great (or terrible, depending on how you look at it) example of how government at all levels — state and federal — and in both parties —...

The EPA is not protecting anyone’s health. It is forcing them to pay more for what should be the most traditional and affordable sources of electricity in the world One of the lesser known attempts to prove that renewable energy, wind and solar power, can replace traditional energy sources—coal, oil, and natural gas—went belly up in much the same way current wind and solar companies depend on tapping the taxpayer for government subsidies in order to stay in business. Google’s Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative begun in 2007 and shut down four years later. Two members of the Institute...

Some people call it "renewable energy" but I prefer to call it "alternative energy" because that's what it really is: an alternative to energy that actually works (eg nuclear and anything made from wonderful, energy-rich fossil fuel.) Now a pair of top boffins from uber-green Google's research department have reached the same conclusion. Ross Konigstein and David Fork, both Stanford PhDs (aerospace engineering; applied physics) were employed on a Google research project which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. But after four years, the project was closed down. In...

The European Commission published a study on Monday (13 October) providing the first full dataset on energy costs and subsidies for the 28 member countries across the different power generation technologies, revealing that the largest share of public intervention in the energy sector has been in favor of solar and on-shore wind energy. The results show that in 2012, the total value of public intervention in energy in the member countries has been between €120-140 billion. The report finds that the largest amounts of current public support in 2012 went to renewables, in particular to solar (€14.7 billion) and onshore...

We would like to take this time to announce the many programs that Macomb Community College has to offer! The idea of providing energy sources outside of electricity, and in the theme of a doomsday, emergency scenario, the many programs, areas of study, and implementation of new technologies at MCC are worth exploring! First and foremost, the Renewable Energy Certificate program and courses available through Macomb Community College are instrumental in building the foundation for a career in the field of Renewable Energy. Within the scope of preparing for natural disasters or widespread electrical failures, renewable and alternative energies are...

The battle over where New Mexico’s electricity will come from after Public Service Company of New Mexico shuts down half of the coal-fired units at San Juan Generating Station near Farmington is growing. Environmentalists and renewable energy advocates adamantly oppose a PNM proposal to increase its share of coal-generated electricity from San Juan by 132 megawatts after some of the plant’s other co-owners abandon it. They fear PNM is committing New Mexico consumers to another two decades of coal-fired electricity despite rising costs from federal environmental regulations, while squandering an opportunity to double down on renewable energy for the future....

Renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, continues to set records for electicity generation and installed capacity in many parts of the world, and as shown in Figure 1 wind and solar growth in recent years has indeed been quite spectacular:~~snip~~If decarbonization is to be achieved by expanding renewables the expansion will have to come in wind, solar and biomass. So let’s take hydro out and see how far growth in wind, solar and biomass has carried us along the decarbonization path so far:Clearly they still have a long way to go.

President Obama’s recently announced energy and environment policies have been tried in many countries, always with the same result: abject failure. Yet when critics point this out, explaining that “the U.S. economy will lose millions of jobs and billions of dollars in growth,” Obama simply waves their objections away: “Let’s face it,” the president answers. “That’s what [critics] always say. … Every time… the warnings of the cynics have been wrong.” Other leaders, especially those in Europe who are further down the green path than is America, know better.The deputy leader of the German Green Party in the Bundestag, Oliver...

Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich signed legislation that ends Ohio’s in-state wind energy mandate and also signed a measure to keep wind turbines farther away from neighboring property. Gov. Kasich signed Senate Bill 310 on June 13. Wind plants in Ohio, unlike in Michigan, will now have to try to compete with cheaper wind generated electricity from states where wind power is produced more efficiently. In addition, the legislation freezes the state’s overall renewable energy mandate for two years, while lawmakers re-evaluate it. Michigan still has an in-state wind mandate and the state Legislature has not made any serious effort...