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“… Consumers for Smart Solar is funded by utilities and front groups seeking to prevent changes to state law that would open the solar market in Florida and specifically allow third party solar leases. Third party solar accounted for 72 precent of residential solar installed across the country in 2014. Instead, the utility-backed ballot initiative would continue to restrict the solar market in Florida by writing into the state constitution that homeowners and businesses cannot use third party solar leases” (Gabe Elsner, Energy and Policy Institute).

Funding to Consumers for Smart Solar for Amendment 1 as of Oct. 28, 2016, Energy and Policy Institute

FPL and Duke have recently announced that they are moving forward with proposed Toshiba AP1000 Nuclear Reactors; Southern is currently trying to build one in Georgia. FPL and Duke are Florida’s two largest electric utilities:
“October 31, 2016 — Florida’s two largest electric…

World:

¶ Top oil companies including Saudi Aramco and Shell will join forces to set up an investment fund to develop technologies to cut carbon emissions and promote renewable energy, sources said on Wednesday. The chief executives of BP, Eni, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Statoil, and Total will announce details on Friday. [The Maritime Executive]

Offshore wind farm at sunrise (Reuters file image)

¶ In an address given at the Canadian Wind Energy Association’s 32nd Annual Conference and Exhibition in Calgary this week, the Canadian Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change said the federal government aims to source 100% of the electricity for its operations from renewable energy by 2025. [Windpower Engineering]

¶ For years environmentalists have campaigned to shut down
the Hazlewood coal-fired power station in Victoria. It is one of the world’s most polluting power plants. Now the owner, French energy company Engie…

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is also Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, and, most recently, The Age of Sustainable Development.

NEW YORK – The big disappointment in the world economy today is the low rate of investment. In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, growth in high-income countries was propelled by spending on housing and private consumption. When the crisis hit, both kinds of spending plummeted, and the investments that should have picked up the slack never materialized. This must change.

After the crisis, the world’s major central banks attempted to revive spending and employment by slashing interest rates. The strategy worked, to some extent. By flooding capital markets with liquidity and holding down market interest rates, policymakers…

“Donald Trump is an ignorant man, a vulgar man, a man who reminds me of Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin in his arrogance and thirst for power.” — Bernie Sanders

A Bizarro Reality

To look at Donald Trump’s version of what makes America great is to take a retrograde step through a rip in space-time and enter a fake populist bizarro land. To venture into an alternate dimension where a once-mighty and enlightened nation was strong-armed into taking the downward-sloping path into crisis and collapse. And like the bizarro land of the Superman mythos, this alternate reality is trying to inflict itself on the real world. It will succeed if we let it.

Trump’s a man who’s angrily proud of the fact that he does not pay taxes to support the safety, security and prosperity of the nation he seeks to lead. He’s a billionaire pandering to white…

Lili Fuhr heads the Ecology and Sustainable Development Department at the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

BERLIN – Mainstream politics, by definition, is ill equipped to imagine fundamental change. But last December in Paris, 196 governments agreed on the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – an objective that holds the promise of delivering precisely such a transformation. Achieving it will require overcoming serious political challenges, reflected in the fact that some are advocating solutions that will end up doing more harm than good.

One strategy that has gained a lot of momentum focuses on the need to develop large-scale technological interventions to control the global thermostat. Proponents of geo-engineering technologies argue that conventional adaptation and mitigation measures are simply not reducing emissions fast enough to prevent dangerous warming. Technologies such as “carbon capture and storage” (CCS), they argue, are necessary to limit damage and human suffering.

The…

Many call it global weirding. But weird just barely describes what’s happening in the Arctic right now. To the consternation of some, I’ve warned that the process we are now witnessing is the start to a kind of death of winter that will assuredly happen if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels soon. But we could just as well call it un-winter. Or de-wintering. Whatever you want to name it, and regardless of whether your initial inclination is to downplay it or to shout it from the hills, what’s happening in the Arctic right now is unprecedented and more than a little scary.

Sea Ice Loss as Start of Arctic De-Wintering

The Arctic Ocean has lost a great deal of its ice coverage during summer over recent years. Darker oceans reflect less of the sun’s rays. And more heat gets transferred to the water’s surface. As summer transitions into fall…

World:

¶ Drought-stricken Mozambique will start building its first large scale solar plant in early 2017, after Scatec Solar, which owns several such plants in Africa, signed an $80 million deal to sell electricity to the state-owned energy company for 25 years. The 40-MW plant will produce energy for some 175,000 households. [eNCA]

Mozambique (Photo: Flickr.com / Ashley)

¶ The offshore wind industry has seen its global levelized costs of electricity plummet 22% due to competitive bidding, reaching a benchmark estimate of $126/MWh during the second half of this year, down 22% from the first half of 2016, and down 28% from the second half of 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. [CleanTechnica]

¶ Toyota’s somewhat baffling unwillingness to embrace all-electric vehicles may finally be ending. Recent comments made by prominent engineers at the company imply that they may be planning to release all-electric models…