Alfredo Padilla grew up in Texas as a migrant farmworker who followed the harvest with his parents to pick sugar beets in Minnesota each summer. He has not forgotten the aches of labor or how much the weather — too little rain, or too much — affected the family livelihood.
Soon after Gov. Jerry Brown proposed expanding greenhouse gas reduction policies in his State of the State address, California’s influential utilities praised Brown’s agenda but moved quietly to craft a version that could be easier for them to meet.
The effort, outlined by the utilities in talks with lawmakers, state regulators and interest groups – including at a private gathering in Napa last week – focuses on a proposal by Brown to increase to 50 percent from one-third the proportion of electricity California derives from such renewable sources as wind and solar.
As the U.S. and China — the world's top two polluting nations — turn to implementing new rules aimed at curbing climate change, the countries can look to the most populous U.S. state as an example of the costs and challenges of fighting global warming.
California already has imposed some of the world's toughest air quality standards as it moves aggressively to lower emissions.
The cost of generating power from renewable energy sources has reached parity or dropped below the cost of fossil fuels in many parts of the world, according to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
IRENA's report, "Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2014, states that biomass, hydropower, geothermal and onshore wind are all competitive with or cheaper than coal, oil and gas-fired power stations, even without financial support and despite falling oil prices. The report was released at IRENA's annual conference in Abu Dhabi this month.
Graduates of a Los Angeles-based solar panel installation training and certification program serving formerly high-risk, gang-involved men and women will provide labor for PV developer 8minutenergy Renewables and renewable energy provider sPower's new 72.9 MW solar project in Kern County, California.
The two companies are teaming up to build three solar PV plants as part of 8minutenergy’s Redwood Solar Farm cluster.
It was 8 degrees in Minneapolis on a recent January day, and out on Interstate 394, snow whipped against the windshields of drivers on their morning commutes. But inside the offices of Cargill, the food conglomerate, Greg Page, the company’s executive chairman, felt compelled to talk about global warming.
“It would be irresponsible not to contemplate it,” Mr. Page said, bundled up in a wool sport coat layered over a zip-up sweater. “I’m 63 years old, and I’ve grown up in the upper latitudes. I’ve seen too much change to presume we might not get more.”
Installations of wind power in the U.S. surged sixfold last year, making it the largest market for the technology worldwide after China.
The U.S. added 4.7 gigawatts of new onshore wind capacity in 2014 compared with 764 megawatts a year earlier, largely due to the extension of the Production Tax Credit in January 2013, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said today in a statement. Total U.S. onshore wind installations are now 64.2 megawatts.
U.S. solar industry jobs grew 21.8% in 2014 as the price of panels continued to fall and demand increased, according to a new report issued Thursday.
The solar industry added 31,000 jobs from November 2013 through October 2014, bringing the total number of jobs to 173,807, according to a report from the Solar Foundation, a nonprofit research group.
Jobs in the the solar sector have jumped 86% since 2010 and employment is expected to continue to rise in 2015 and 2016, although an expiring tax credit may stunt growth, according to the report.
California is home to the largest advanced energy industry in the country, according to the first-ever industry-wide survey released today by the Advanced Energy Economy Institute. At 431,800 jobs today, advanced energy is bigger by employment in California than the motion picture, television, and radio industries; mining and quarrying; semiconductors; and aerospace.
When the fossil-fuel divestment movement first stirred on college campuses three years ago, you could almost hear Big Oil and Wall Street laughing. Crude prices were flirting with $100 a barrel, and domestic oil production, from Texas to North Dakota, was in the midst of a historic boom. But the quixotic campus campaign suddenly has the smell of smart money.