By: Bill McKibben

Twenty-one years ago, in 1989, I wrote what many have called the first book for a general audience on global warming. One of the more interesting reviews came from the Wall Street Journal. It was a mixed and judicious appraisal. “The subject,” the reviewer said, “is important, the notion is arresting, and Mr. McKibben argues convincingly.” And that was not an outlier: around the same time, the first president Bush announced that he planned to “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.”

I doubt that’s what the Journal will say about my next book when it comes out in a few weeks, and I know that no GOP presidential contender would now dream of acknowledging that human beings are warming the planet. Sarah Palin is currently calling climate science “snake oil” and last week, the Utah legislature, in a move straight out of the King Canute playbook, passed a resolution condemning “a well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome” on a nearly party-line vote.

(more…)

Two of these blocks can power an American home, while one will suffice for a European home. A stack of 64 can power a small business. What is this magical box and where can you get one?

It’s the Bloom Box, essentially a power plant in a box, and it claims to be the latest breakthrough in clean energy technology. You can’t get one yet, but K.R. Sridhar, founder of Bloom Energy, says there will be one in every American home in five to 10 years.

Sridhar has been developing the technology for the past 10 years, and its all been kept relatively under wraps. The company made their first public appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday, in an exclusive interview with Lesley Stahl preceding the company’s official launch this Wednesday.

Sridhar invented a new kind of fuel cell that is entirely self-sufficient. He feeds oxygen into one side of a cell while fuel is supplied to the other side. The two combine, forming a chemical reaction that produce electricity.

(more…)

By: Todd Woody

On the heels of San Francisco’s announcement last week that it plans to spend $150 million greening up homes, comes a new report that studies a slew of other innovative ways to finance energy efficiency improvements for all types of buildings.

It’s no big surprise that the key to ramping up the energy efficiency industry and fostering technological advances is no-money-down financing so building owners can avoid the capital costs of retrofits. And that’s exactly what the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) is working toward.

Energy efficiency “immediately saves money for end-users, improves the bottom line for companies, reduces local exposure to electricity grid outages and offsets the need for new power plants,” wrote the authors of the report from the CalCEF, a non-profit venture capital outfit based in San Francisco. “Yet, efficiency upgrades and their respective financing options are often out of reach for most end-users, as the initial capital cost exceeds near-term savings.”

(more…)

Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, made waves last week when, at the much-celebrated tech conference TED, he proclaimed that climate change is the most important problem facing the planet. Wo0t! Obviously having someone of Gates’ stature supporting the clean energy race is an unqualified good. (See Alex Steffen on Gates’ talk.)

That said, Gates has burst on to the energy scene with some rather ill-considered thinking. To get a flavor, see his blog post, “Why We Need Innovation, Not Just Insulation.” The idea is that “conservation and behavior change” might get the world to its 2020 or 2030 targets, but to get to 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050 we’ll need fundamental technological innovation. Ergo: we should pay more attention to, and devote more money to, basic science and R&D.

Now: it’s incontestably true that the U.S. investment in R&D is lower than it should be. We should increase funding in the search for game-changing technology that can help us generate and use energy more sustainably. Indeed, we should increase funding in lots of things! Therein lies the rub.

There are two problems with Gates’ dichotomy between innovation and insulation. The first is the more obvious but the second is more meaningful. (Also, see Joe Romm and Sean Casten for further Gates critiques.)

(more…)

By: Gary Luquette

In his State of the Union address, President Obama talked about “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.”

When it comes to respectfully developing America’s abundant oil and natural gas resources–including areas in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)–there’s nothing tough about this decision. We should be developing America’s Outer Continental Shelf, and we should be doing it now. It’s a huge win for America. Here’s why.

America needs the energy. The recession may have slowed energy demand temporarily, but one day, we expect that overall energy demand will not only return, it will grow. In fact, we’re seeing growth already in China and India.

Some people point to renewables and alternatives as a silver bullet to solve the demand challenge. But as the President pointed out in his White House briefing remarks this week, the sheer scale of our energy needs requires that we focus on a comprehensive approach. The fact is, we need more of all forms of energy, including oil and natural gas–which, most projections see as providing the dominant share of the energy mix for decades.

(more…)