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Fail: Merkel’s market-friendly Climate Plan banks on fairy tales
After months of deliberations, in late September Germany’s ruling coalition, made up of the center-right CDU/CSU and the Centrist SPD unveiled their new climate action strategy—to near universal disappointment. Now approved by the government, the plan’s architects hope a weak plan is better than none at all. L. Michael Buchsbaum summarizes
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In US, Community Solar is the Next Big Thing
Americans in some states are realizing the benefits of renewables. Better than in Europe: it saves low-income people money. But its overall numbers are still comparatively small. Paul Hockenos takes a look at the development
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Fire in the holes: Transforming mined out lands into solar plants
While most post-mining plans, especially for surface mines, calls for pits to be redeveloped into lakes or farm land, an increasing body of research and evidence shows that these ripped-up landscapes can be successfully transformed into clean energy gold mines—whose solar PV resource potential, unlike coal’s, is infinite. L. Michael Buchsbaum reports
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Look to Europe to Improve the Green New Deal: Why Laws Matter
The Green New Deal (GND) pact embraced by scores of US Democrats is chock- full of vibrant ideas and urgent policy considerations. It’s right that with the climate crisis accelerating faster than scientists predicted and our window to curb it narrowing, we have to think big – indeed something at least as sweeping in scope as the New Deal recovery program of the 1930s....
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Sound and fury: Merkel’s Climate Cabinet and its shortcomings
Despite increasing public pressure, both coalition parties within Merkel’s so-called Climate Cabinet favor taxes or market based trading schemes to tackle the climate crisis instead of new regulations to increase renewable energy or hard measures to phase out fossil fuels. L. Michael Buchsbaum takes a look
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New trains for old tracks – how Guatemala City aims to tackle its traffic chaos
Sometimes clean and efficient energy solutions do not require rocket science or fancy buzzwords, such as block chain or other digital jargon. When it comes to reforming public transportation in urban areas the City of Guatemala is now retrieving old train tracks – put in place in the late 1800s to aid the country’s growing banana exports – to solve its mounting traffic nightmare....
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Deliberate de-liberalization: The case of the RWE-E.ON-Innogy merger
The complex merger deal will transform Europe’s worst polluter, RWE, into one of its largest renewable energy generators allowing it unprecedented behind-the-meter influence as partner E.ON dominates German grid distribution and consumer access. This poses a threat for competition and could upend Europe’s energy transition.
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Greta’s Coming for Us: It’s the climate-change believers she’s out to flip
On a high-speed, zero-emissions vessel, Greta Thunberg arrived in the U.S. from Europe on August 29 – a masterpiece of symbolism and PR savvy, the kind which by now we’ve come to expect from the Swedish teenager and her fellow activists in the Fridays for Future movement. In the space of just one short year, their audacious “school strikes” on Fridays have prompted a startling...
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Gagging on America’s freedom gas
As utilities across Europe make the switch from coal to gas, CO2 emissions there are falling. But on the other side of the Atlantic, ever-rising fracking production deteriorates air and water quality, impacting public health. Buchsbaum reports from Colorado where ozone and other industry associated pollutants regularly makes outdoor exercise dangerous.
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South African private banks turn their backs on new domestic coal plants
The construction of new coal-fired power plants in South Africa has hit a major roadblock, with three of the biggest private banks saying they will stop funding dirty energy infrastructure developments here. Leonie Joubert reports
This website highlights how energy transitions around the world are moving forward. It shows how they work, and what challenges lie ahead. The e-book on Germany’s Energiewende explains the country’s politics and policies, often regarded as the front runner in the global energy transition.