NREL Prizes for Energy Innovation
The Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are teaming up to produce a series of competitive prize programs to facilitate innovation in energy and decarbonization.
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Energy
Cities, Unsurprisingly, Have Far Lower Per Capita Energy Footprints.
Energy data show that cities, as we already know, allow for far more energy-efficient uses of land and space than their suburban and rural counterparts.
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Does Big Oil Deserve A Seat At COP28?
The world’s favorite international stopover for consumer largesse and one of the biggest oil producers in the world is hosting the UN’s climate conference. Should we be outraged? Or ever more invested?
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Planning Conference Day 2: Downtown Traverse, Renewable Energy
The second day of the annual conference of the Michigan Association of Planning involved a great tour, a lot of learning, and some serious head-scratching about how little attention is being paid to topics of decarbonization and climate change.
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Is Bus Electrification Economical or Environmental? Possibly Both.
City buses have historically been powered by dirty diesel engines. Upgrading to CNG improves emissions and reduces smog, but doesn’t improve efficiency. Electrification, on the other hand, could drastically improve efficiency, drastically reduce emissions, and reduce operating costs to boot. There is a higher capital cost up front, which can potentially be amortized over a longer lifespan.
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Southeast Michigan Dreams of Public Power
Municipalization of public utilities, transportation systems, and distribution systems for gas and electricity was all the rage about a century ago. Is it time to bring it back into vogue? A symposium looked at this question.
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Sidebar: An Easy Argument Against Fossil Fuels? Cost.
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of solar and onshore wind power have declined so much in the past decade that we’ve gone from an all-renewable grid being a pipe dream to it being a matter of simple market logic. While there are a couple of challenges ahead, this is at least encouraging as we continue down the road toward decarbonization.
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Why Is So Much Farmland Suddenly Being Taken Up By Solar Power? Also, Is That Bad?
Solar farms are growing in popularity, taking up more and more land every day. Is that a good thing?
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The GOP Released Their Policy Blueprint For 2025. It’s A Mess.
The Republican Party has drafted its “policy” plans for 2025, when they at this point seem unlikely to be able to retake the White House. While there are some valuable points in critiquing the structure of the federal regulatory apparatus, most of the over-arching objectives include dismantling federal agencies and applying theocratic and corporatist dogma to American public policy.
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Labor for a Just Transition
Kristin Caffray writes about how central the labor movement is to the question of a just transition to decarbonization, and how this must involve everyone ranging from urban factory workers to rural coal miners in what might become a valuable and rare point of bipartisanship.
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