Uplifting Info

For the past ten years I have been pretty much into personal development. Well, as a teenager I was already a bit interested in not-so-mainstream topics such as the power of the human mind, psychic phenomena and plenty of other metaphysical topics. It comes to no surprise that my peers thought I was a bit weird, you know how it is. So when I got hooked on to personal development topics later on in life, I was already primed for certain ideas and insights. It came easier for me to hop on from one book or one topic to another without needing a stretch of time to digest certain ideas. I got pretty sucked into it. I read heaps of books, started off my blog Soul Hiker and wrote a few hundred articles to share my insights and experiences with others following the same path.

In those ten years of learning and practice, I did come a long way with a wealth of inner growth but also many pitfalls. What is more relevant is that I have also arrived at a solid practical realisation – a kind of a key that unlocks some doors without having to knock them down really. That key is Simple Living or the idea of simplifying life in order to shed away what is unnecessary, inauthentic and a hindrance to your life purpose. The concept might seem obvious but somehow hidden none the less. Personal growth, or rather actualising your highest potential and becoming the best version of yourself, requires shedding off and letting go of things which are not authentically in line with your Soul agenda rather than putting in a lot of effort to learn or acquire something else. It’s energy-wasting spending hours, days and weeks trying to relearn habits, boosting your confidence, visualising your goals, improving your creativity, doing soul searching, etc without first simplifying your life. Yes all these things and others are important personal development tools but I have realised that by doing one thing – engaging in a path of Simple Living – will make everything else effortless. This is particularly true to your goal of self-actualisation or becoming the best You.

So in a way, if we only tried to make life simpler and nothing else, it’s already a hundredfold better than trying hard to do other self-improvement stuff – some of which perhaps fail, we give up on or take us a lot of persistence and struggle to achieve. I strongly believe that the message of Simple Living is a very important one and here are some of the reasons why:

Less Noise & Clutter:

In an online course I created about Simple Living, one of the most important lectures is one which has to do with clearing and decluttering spaces. Not just physical spaces around us (although this is also important) but our inner spaces too. In a way living a simpler life means managing your time and space better. Very often our spaces become cluttered and disordered, making life more difficult than it has to be.

On a physical level, this can be seen in cluttered living or working spaces, rooms in our homes or perhaps disorganised drawers, closets and desks. On an emotional and psychological level, this manifests as mental noise, unclear paths of action, conflicting ideas and lack of a clear purpose. So decluttering our inner and outer spaces will literally clear the obstructions for us (or others: hint) to move freely through them and this will resonate on all other levels of our life. Clearly there is much more to decluttering than routine – it is a way of opening up to life.

Understanding what is Relevant:

Another important concept of simple living is understanding what is necessary vs. what isn’t. It is about distinguishing between our real needs and socially suggested wants. Of course everyone is able to distinguish between the two but we don’t most of the time because we live in a collective trance of consumerism and mass media.

When we start becoming more aware of how much our actions and decisions are influenced by society and culture, we start standing back from it all. It becomes more and more clear that a lot of the things we were made to believe were needs are nothing more than wants and we can do without because they are not authentic to our purpose. This clarity brings with it a sense of power and freedom. In itself it is the spirit of simple living.

So in a nutshell living simply involves being clear about what is relevant, necessary and needed rather than living in a haze or worse living out a social program just like automatons.

Finding Authenticity:

The last point naturally brings forth a more interesting topic – that of living an authentic life. But what does living an authentic life really mean? In my view, living authentically means not being limited or confined to live out someone else’s life or a social template laid down to us through our socialisation. It means being free of the fear of being judged or disapproved of by your peers and authorities. It means being free to follow your passions and purpose without being infected by those fear-based thoughts transmitted by others.

Creating Space for Inner Creativity:

Of course authenticity walks hand in hand with creativity. It is natural that creativity requires a degree of freedom from constraints and limited thinking. Free-thinker, artists and bohemians are considered to be creative because they live outside the norms and behavioural rules of society. They are often nonconformists because of this reason. But more importantly, creativity arises when there is enough space for it to flow through and also here I mean inner and outer space.

So having a simplified and clear environmental and inner spaces is conducive to more creativity. The reverse is also true. Try to work in a messy store room with machinery noise going on and see whether creativity comes knocking on your door!

Life Purpose in Focus:

People often ask me how is it that they can find their life purpose. Many times I jokingly reply that they are asking the wrong person since it took me a long while to discover mine but I know that a good part of the answer lies in simplicity. In other words, the less physical, mental and emotional obstructions one has in life, the more clear his or her life purpose comes into focus. There is no real mystery here. The perfect analogy to vision is obvious. If you try to look for something – say your TV remote control in a disorganised and overcrowded room – it is going to be more difficult then if there was nothing else in the room besides the remote control. In this scenario, the more you start shedding away the junk and stuff in the room, the better are the chances that what you are looking for comes into view. Same thing with your life purpose. If you are trying to be approved by others by living other people’s goals and standards, the less chance you have of coming close to understand what is authentically your life purpose.

On the other hand, with less obstructions along the way, what genuinely drives you becomes clearer, which brings me to the next point.

Understanding Yourself and Motivations:

Finding your life purpose might not always be a direct result of simplifying your life although a lot of times it is. Sometimes simplifying life brings us first closer to understanding ourselves and our inner motivations which then sheds more light on our true purpose.

Sometimes our motivations and drives are not clear because very often the mind and heart are in conflict or out of sync. With simplicity comes less noise and conflict which in turn makes it easier to have a better understanding of ourself and our motivations.

More Time or Better Management of It:

The natural companion to decluttering spaces is managing our time better. Admittedly, I was always at a loss when it comes to managing my time. But then I found that time is much easier to manage when you take away all those things, chores, pressures and activities which server no purpose. In reality when you are living a simpler life, time management is not so much of an issue anymore. Time management is more relevant when you are bombarded with a thousand chores and activities, the hallmark of a complicated and stress-laden modern lifestyle.

Simple living is moving in the opposite direction to this. So when you are doing only those things and activities which springs out from an authentic sense of passion and belonging, time management is simpler. Of course some time management skills still apply even in simple living – in fact in my course I have also reserved space for this – but it is not the rat-race time management sort of thing; it’s more of a further optimisation to an already focused and simple life.

Breathe in. Do you taste that? No?

Exactly.

The summer of 2014 has been a tentative triumph for GTA air quality. With the season’s end in sight, no smog advisories have been issued for the city so far – or anywhere else in Ontario, for that matter.

A new University of Toronto-led study helps explain why. The authors demonstrate remarkable improvements in regional air pollution since 2000. But that success is also a tentative one.

The good news: concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides, two precursor pollutants for smog, are trending downwards. The bad news: ozone, another smog component, persists at levels that violate Canada-wide standards. And while improved air quality has already translated into meaningful public health gains, this summer our lungs were probably saved by cool temperatures, an increasingly less likely scenario thanks to global climate change.

“We think that we are just reaching the point where we are going to start seeing improvements as a result of decreasing emissions, but the wild card is always the weather,” says Jennifer Murphy, an atmospheric chemist at U of T and the study’s lead author.

Smog is the result of a complicated reaction between VOCs and nitrogen oxides, emitted primarily by cars and trucks, and sunlight. They combine to form ground-level ozone, a secondary pollutant.

According to the U of T study, levels of both have declined precipitously since 2000. So if the precursor chemical components for ozone have decreased, why hasn’t ozone itself?

“That’s the frustrating and complicated thing,” says Murphy. Because of the nature of the reactions involved, “it’s not as though if you cut the ingredients in half, you get a cake that is half as big.” We are emitting fewer primary pollutants than before, but they are reacting in the atmosphere more quickly, so ozone levels have not yet turned the corner.

Murphy believes they soon will. But weather can trump everything. The years from 2008 to 2011 had consistently lower ozone levels than in previous years, but 2012, a hot and dry year, had some of the highest summertime ozone concentrations recorded and eight smog advisories.

“Even though we’ve improved the chemistry so much, if we had another hot summer, then we would still expect to have these problems. You can’t just have one summer with bad weather and say there’s no smog in Toronto anymore,” says Murphy.

Experts credit the closure of coal-fired power plants and initiatives like Drive Clean with reductions of primary pollutants.

“It does go to show a lot of the policy changes that have taken place to help with that (are working),” says Gabriella Kalapos, executive director of the Clean Air Partnership.

But Kalapos warns against complacency because of the steep health costs of bad air. In 2004, there were 1,700 premature deaths and 6,000 hospitalizations in Toronto as a result of poor air quality. This year, those numbers dropped to 1,300 and 3,550, respectively.

“It’s very good, but the numbers are still high,” says Monica Campbell, director of healthy public policy with Toronto Public Health.

Smog advisories have been issued as late as October, so it’s not time to start celebrating quite yet.

Breathe in. Do you taste that? No?

Exactly.

The summer of 2014 has been a tentative triumph for GTA air quality. With the season’s end in sight, no smog advisories have been issued for the city so far – or anywhere else in Ontario, for that matter.

A new University of Toronto-led study helps explain why. The authors demonstrate remarkable improvements in regional air pollution since 2000. But that success is also a tentative one.

The good news: concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides, two precursor pollutants for smog, are trending downwards. The bad news: ozone, another smog component, persists at levels that violate Canada-wide standards. And while improved air quality has already translated into meaningful public health gains, this summer our lungs were probably saved by cool temperatures, an increasingly less likely scenario thanks to global climate change.

“We think that we are just reaching the point where we are going to start seeing improvements as a result of decreasing emissions, but the wild card is always the weather,” says Jennifer Murphy, an atmospheric chemist at U of T and the study’s lead author.

Smog is the result of a complicated reaction between VOCs and nitrogen oxides, emitted primarily by cars and trucks, and sunlight. They combine to form ground-level ozone, a secondary pollutant.

According to the U of T study, levels of both have declined precipitously since 2000. So if the precursor chemical components for ozone have decreased, why hasn’t ozone itself?

“That’s the frustrating and complicated thing,” says Murphy. Because of the nature of the reactions involved, “it’s not as though if you cut the ingredients in half, you get a cake that is half as big.” We are emitting fewer primary pollutants than before, but they are reacting in the atmosphere more quickly, so ozone levels have not yet turned the corner.

Murphy believes they soon will. But weather can trump everything. The years from 2008 to 2011 had consistently lower ozone levels than in previous years, but 2012, a hot and dry year, had some of the highest summertime ozone concentrations recorded and eight smog advisories.

“Even though we’ve improved the chemistry so much, if we had another hot summer, then we would still expect to have these problems. You can’t just have one summer with bad weather and say there’s no smog in Toronto anymore,” says Murphy.

Experts credit the closure of coal-fired power plants and initiatives like Drive Clean with reductions of primary pollutants.

“It does go to show a lot of the policy changes that have taken place to help with that (are working),” says Gabriella Kalapos, executive director of the Clean Air Partnership.

But Kalapos warns against complacency because of the steep health costs of bad air. In 2004, there were 1,700 premature deaths and 6,000 hospitalizations in Toronto as a result of poor air quality. This year, those numbers dropped to 1,300 and 3,550, respectively.

“It’s very good, but the numbers are still high,” says Monica Campbell, director of healthy public policy with Toronto Public Health.

Smog advisories have been issued as late as October, so it’s not time to start celebrating quite yet.

In Beijing, China banned 2.5 million cars from driving for 2 weeks to get this beautiful blue sky for a World War II commemorative parade. As soon as the parade was over, the ban was lifted, and the blue vanished within 24 hours.

Photo via CNN, where there’s a longer writeup by the guys in their Beijing bureau.

It worked. On the morning of the parade, the air quality index (AQI) — an international standard for measuring the severity of air pollution — dipped to a pristine 17 out of 500, signifying very healthy air.

Excited Beijingers coined the unusually blue skies “parade blue.”

But now the cars are back and the city is back to “Beijing gray.”

Friday’s AQI shot up past 160 in parts of the city, rated “unhealthy”.

[HT: Gabe Klein]

What’s 23 feet tall, eats smog, and makes jewelry for fun?

In Rotterdam this week, the designer Daan Roosegaarde is showing off the result of three years of research and development: The largest air purifier ever built. It’s a tower that scrubs the pollution from more than 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour-and then condenses those fine particles of smog into tiny “gem stones” that can be embedded in rings, cufflinks, and more.

Each stone is roughly equivalent to cleaning 1,000 cubic meters of air-so you’re literally wearing the pollution that once hung in the air around Roosegaarde’s so-called Smog Free Tower. In the designer’s words, buying a ring means “you donate a thousand cubic meters of clean air to the city where the Smog Free Tower is.”

The project has been in the offing for a long time. We wrote about the idea more than two years ago when the Dutch designer first publicly announced the project, which was originally planned for Beijing after the city’s mayor endorsed the idea. Roosegaarde and his team have spent the past few years developing the first prototype in Rotterdam, where it was unveiled this month. “It’s really weird that we accept [pollution] as something normal, and take it for granted,” Roosegaarde explains.

The white, oblong tower-slatted with louvres protecting its electronic innards-will still eventually make its way to Beijing, which of course is notorious for its smog. It’ll also make stops in Mumbai and Paris, and possibly other cities (you can suggest your own using the project’s hashtag on Twitter).

To fund the travel, the studio launched a Kickstarter campaign where you can buy jewelry and cufflinks made with its tiny smog gems-which, theoretically, would eventually become diamonds if they were compressed with much more extreme pressure.

But for now, the tower sits on a patch of grass next to Roosegaarde’s studio in Rotterdam, whose mayor and local government supported the project with grant money.

The process taking place inside its walls is powered by 1,400 watts of sustainable energy, which is comparable to a water boiler, and the studio says it hopes to one day integrate solar PVs into the design to power the process-which works not so differently than some ionic air purifiers. Roosegaarde explains:

By charging the Smog Free Tower with a small positive current, an electrode will send positive ions into the air. These ions will attach themselves to fine dust particles. A negatively charged surface -the counter electrode- will then draw the positive ions in, together with the fine dust particles. The fine dust that would normally harm us, is collected together with the ions and stored inside of the tower. This technology manages to capture ultra-fine smog particles which regular filter systems fail to do.

Now that the working prototype is up and running, the next step is figuring out how to bring it to other cities-including the city that started it all, Beijing. The team’s Kickstarter, where the studio is raising funds for another eight days, is closing in on doubling its goal-you can get your own smog gems by donating here.

That cash will go directly to transporting the tower, publicizing the design in cities around the world. Eventually, that attention could lead to copycats and spin-off designs-one day, these ungainly white tower might be fixtures in our parks and playgrounds.

That we need super-sized air purifiers to live in super-polluted cities is certainly a pretty grim prospect. But at least someone is thinking hard about not only how to clean the air, but how to get people excited about funding that process.

Contact the author at [email protected].

By Megan Darby Building compact, connected and efficient cities could save 3.7 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2030 – more than India’s carbon footprint.

Avoiding wasteful urban sprawl also brings big energy cost savings, worth US$16.6 trillion worldwide in the period to 2050 – a fifth of world GDP in nominal terms.

Those are the conclusions of the latest New Climate Economy report, part of a series to show the economic benefits of climate action.

It calls for a $1 billion public finance package to green the world’s 500 largest cities, in line with global efforts to decarbonise the economy.

The first thing a mayor should think of is public transport, said Nick Godfrey, urban development expert at the NCE.

“Getting transport right, particularly in fast-growing cities at an early stage, shapes the entire urban form of a city.”

Analysis: How can cities influence a global climate deal in Paris?

That could involve bus rapid transit (BRT) systems – priority bus routes that are relatively cheap to set up.

With the urban population growing by 1.4 million a week, mostly in the developing world, such schemes are in urgent demand.

A system installed in Johannesburg had net benefits of nearly US$900 million, according to analysis by WRI’s Embarq project. The bulk of that came from shortened travel times and better road safety, with CO2 cuts a bonus.

Other low carbon opportunities are in energy efficient buildings and waste disposal.

The extra upfront cost of investing in greener options is relatively small, Godfrey told RTCC, at less than 5%. And the operational savings are “huge”.

Michael Bloomberg, in his role as UN climate and cities envoy, last September launched an initiative to spur urban leaders into action.

To date, 136 cities representing 3.1% of the world population have signed up to the Compact of Mayors, committing to cut their carbon footprints.

The scheme’s partner organisations C40, ICLEI and UCLG collectively reach 2,000 cities.

Report: Cities face ‘huge’ finance gap for climate-friendly infrastructure

Amanda Eichel, who is working with Bloomberg on the programme, is hoping to get hundreds of mayors to Paris this December.

While it will be national negotiators working to strike a global carbon-cutting pact, cities are “a critical part of the climate solution,” she said.

Particularly in the next five years, before a new treaty kicks in, investment decisions by urban planners will make a big difference.

Welcoming the NCE report, Eichel added: “This is actually the first time we have been able to show there is a strong economic argument for cities to take action.”

Attracting finance is a stumbling block. A 2013 World Bank study found only 4% of the 500 biggest cities in the developing world were able to raise capital on international markets.

By tightening up on tax collection and making robust business cases, they can improve their financial credibility.

Kampala in Uganda, for example, increased its revenues 86% in a year and was awarded an A credit rating in May.

“One of the reasons cities often have problems with creditworthiness is a lack of data on investability of sustainable infrastructure,” said Eichel. “A core driver around the Compact of Mayors is starting to gather this kind of data in one place.”

Putting cities on a course of smart growth – with expanded public transit, energy-saving buildings, and better waste management – could save as much as $22tn and avoid the equivalent in carbon pollution of India’s entire annual output of greenhouse gasses, according to leading economists.

The Global Commission on Climate and Economy, an independent initiative by former finance ministers and leading research institutions from Britain and six other countries, found climate-smart cities would spur economic growth and a better quality of life – at the same time as cutting carbon pollution.

If national governments back those efforts, the savings on transport, buildings, and waste disposal could reach up to $22tn ($14tn) by 2050, the researchers found. By 2030, those efforts would avoid the equivalent of 3.7 gigatonnes a year – more than India’s current greenhouse gas emissions, the report found.

The finding upends the notion that it is too expensive to do anything about climate change – or that such efforts would make little real difference. Not true, said the researchers.

“There is now increasing evidence that emissions can decrease while economies continue to grow,” said Seth Schultz, a researcher for the C40 climate leadership group who consulted on the report.

“Becoming more sustainable and putting the world – specifically cities – on a low carbon trajectory is actually feasible and good economics.”

The report called on the world’s leading cities to commit to low carbon development strategies by 2020.

The findings, were released as the United Nations and environmental groups try to spur greater action on climate change ahead of critical negotiations in Paris at the end of the year.

The Paris meeting is seen as a linchpin of efforts to hold warming to 2C by moving the global economy away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy.

Related: Everything you need to know about the Paris climate summit and UN talks

The UN concedes the climate commitments to date fall far short of the 2C goal. But the strategies outlined in the report – some of which are being put into place already – would on their own make up about 20% of that gap, said Amanda Eichel of Bloomberg Philanthropies who also consulted on the report.

Two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050, with Africa’s urban population growing at twice the rate of the rest of the world.

The right choices now, in terms of long-term planning for urban development and transport, could improve people’s lives and fight climate change, the report found.

Investing in public transport would make the biggest immediate difference, the report found. Air pollution is already choking the sprawling cities of India and China. Traffic jams and accidents are taking a toll on the local economy in cities from Cairo to Sao Paulo.

But building bus lanes, such as those rolling out in Buenos Aires, could cut commuting time by up to 50%, the report said.

Green building standards could cut electricity use, reduce heat island effects, and reduce demand for water. In waste management, biogas from waste could be harnessed as fuel to provide electricity to communities, as was already being done by Lagos in Nigeria and other cities.

ASPEN – Boulder, it’s your move.

Aspen has become only the third U.S. city to be entirely run on renewable energy, according to the Aspen Times. The other two cities? Burlington, Vermont and Greensburg, Kansas.

The Pitkin County resort town got the designation after signing a contract with wholesale electric energy provider Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska.

Before that, it was at 75 to 80 percent renewable energy – and had decided 10 years ago to make that 100 percent.

Aspen eliminated using a coal a while back, replacing that with wind power provided by four farms in Nebraska and South Dakota. The Aspen Times reports it also uses energy from Ruedi Reservoir, Maroon Creek and Ridgway Reservoir.

(© 2015 KUSA)

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Back in January, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) made a promise. His state, he said, would pursue a new package of climate goals that are the most ambitious in the nation (and among the most ambitious in the world). California was already a leader in efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy. Brown pledged to go further. By 2030, he declared, California would double the energy efficiency of state buildings; get half its electricity from renewables; and halve consumption of gasoline by cars and trucks.

At the time, all those nice-sounding goals were just words in a speech. But they could very soon become the law of the land. The state legislature is currently considering several bills (SB 350 is the most important) that would codify Brown’s climate agenda. The legislation is widely expected to pass before the end of the legislative session next Friday, but not without a fight from the state’s powerful oil lobby.

Before we get into the bills themselves, let’s talk about California. Believe it or not, the state where America fell in love with cars and highways is now leading the nation, and the world, when it comes to climate action. And that matters, because California, the world’s seventh-largest economy, is a world-class emitter of greenhouse gases. It ranks second for state emissions, behind Texas, and if it were its own nation, it would rank 20th globally, right between Italy and Spain. Still, it’s remarkably clean for its size: On a per-capita basis, it ranks 45th among US states and 38th when compared with countries around the world. (Below, the bars represent total emissions and the dots represent per-capita emissions.)

California is also special because of how much of its emissions come from road transportation (cars, trucks, buses, etc.), which is why a major reduction in gasoline use would be so significant. Nationally, just 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are from transportation; in California, it’s 37 percent. Another way to crunch those numbers: One-tenth of the nation’s road transport emissions come from California. Unsurprisingly, California is also the biggest consumer of gasoline, accounting for one-tenth of the national gas market. As a result, it also has an infamously aggressive oil lobby-more on that in a minute.

“If California can do this, it could really be the beginning of the snowball,” Tim O’Connor said.

California first stepped onto the national climate stage back in 2006 during the Arnold Schwarzenegger administration, with the passage of AB32, known as the Global Warming Solutions Act. That law sets a target of reducing the state’s economy-wide carbon footprint to 1990 levels by 2020. Since the bill was enacted, gasoline consumption in the state is down 9 percent-double the nationwide decline. Total carbon emissions are also down, while GDP and population are both on the rise. Roll those things together and you get the most impressive number: The carbon intensity of the state’s economy (that is, emissions per unit of GDP) is down 28 percent. The upshot is that California has become a proving ground for the notion that strong economic growth and climate action can go hand in hand:

That’s where the current bills come in. SB 350 would bring the state’s gasoline consumption down to about where Florida’s is now, while setting new targets for clean energy and energy efficiency projects. There’s also SB32, which would build on Schwarzenegger’s targets and require the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 (to meet that target, emissions have to start falling about five times faster than they currently are). That would be the most aggressive state target in the country; nationally, the furthest President Barack Obama has gone is to aim for a 26-28 percent reduction by 2025 (and that’s not enshrined in law, either). Both bills passed the state Senate in June by a wide margin; they’re due for a vote in the Assembly within the coming week. If they pass, they’ll head to Brown’s desk for a signature.

Neither bill includes specific prescriptions for how to meet the targets. Those are left to the state’s Air Resources Board (CARB), which would be required to turn in an enforcement plan by 2017. The gas consumption target would likely require some combination of new fuel efficiency standards for cars, incentives for alternative fuels and biofuels, cooperation with local planning agencies to improve public transit and make communities less car-reliant, and a push to get people to buy more electric vehicles. (California is already home to half of the roughly 174,000 electric vehicles on the road in the United States.)

“If California can do this, it could really be the beginning of the snowball,” said Tim O’Connor, director of California policy for the Environmental Defense Fund. “This is how California can really shake up the national conversation on climate.”

The oil lobby has long been the most powerful special interest group in Sacramento.

Combined, these efforts are expected to create up to half a million jobs, according to a recent University of California-Berkeley study, and draw billions in clean tech investments (for which California is already the undisputed national champ). The bills’ supporters in the California capitol also say they will save millions of dollars in traffic-related public health costs and result in reduced energy bills.

The bills’ other supporters include Obama; both the state’s US senators and a majority of its congressional delegation; and a coalition of California businesses, large and small. But they also have some powerful enemies who are pushing back hard.

Because of the state’s share of the gasoline market, and its robust oil and gas production industry, the oil lobby has long been the most powerful special interest in Sacramento. The biggest group, the Western States Petroleum Association, spent $8.9 million on lobbying last year. Now, Californians are getting blitzed by ads like the one below, from the so-called California Drivers Alliance (backed by WSPA, and representing “fuel users & providers”). The ad claims SB 350 will lead to gas rationing and is all about “limiting how far we can drive” and “penalizing drivers for using too much gas.” The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), called the ad “absurd” and “fear-mongering.”

“There’s a significant amount of inertia protecting the industry,” O’Connor said. “The lobby is putting its aim right at the center, at swing moderates” in the Assembly.

We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out. But California has a strong history of leadership on climate policies-including carbon trading programs (it created the nation’s first economy-wide cap-and-trade market in 2012) and clean vehicle standards-so the odds are pretty good.

“The governor has put his reputation on the line,” O’Connor said. “It’s hard to imagine 350 won’t pass.”

A startling decoupling of grid-supplied electricity and economic growth has occurred in Australia over the past few years.

Since peaking in 2009, electricity demand in the Australian National Electricity Market has fallen by 7.5 percent while Australian GDP has expanded by about 16 percent.

What this goes to show is that economic growth can-and has-proceeded without having to rely on coal-fired electricity.

Falling demand for grid-supplied electricity has been driven in part by less appetite from energy-intensive industries (in particular by shutdowns of aluminium smelters in New South Wales and Victoria) but also by energy-efficiency advances and growth in rooftop solar installations.

Australia as a whole is just short of 15 percent solar penetration already-plenty of room still to grow but the uptake has been remarkable. The state of South Australia will soon reach 25 percent penetration while the Queensland city of Brisbane has achieved 40 percent penetration. Meanwhile, average rooftop solar system sizes continue to expand, growing from about 4.5 kilowatts earlier this year to 4.84 kilowatts in recent months.

WHY THE BOOM IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ROOFTOP SOLAR?

Much of it can be attributed directly to an exponential increase in retail electricity prices. Those prices in turn are tied to ‘gold-plating’ of the networks, that is, utilities’ pouring money into the grid as a way to ensure they continue to make money.

The divergence in retail and wholesale pricing is nothing short of extraordinary. Chart 1 here how retail electricity prices in the state of Victoria have risen 195 percent over the past 16 years -in stark contrast to the 56 percent increase to the consumer price index over the same period. Wholesale prices have actually fallen over the same period of time.

The advent of electricity storage will only accelerate these trends, especially the installation of rooftop solar over the medium term. AGL Energy, one of the major Australian utilities, recently rolled out a solar battery-package offering, although the price is too high to drive significant take-up in the short term.

(On my house, for example, I can get a 4-kilowatt solar system fully installed for $A5,757 with a payback period of approximately five years while what AGL is offering-a 7.2-kilowatt battery-would have an installed cost of $14,289 and a payback period of approximately 8.5 years.)

As new battery products hit the market-lithium and flow batteries, for instance-and as scale economies drive prices down, storage costs will decline rapidly. History is a guide on this point. Since 2009, photovoltaic panel and systems prices haves fallen by about 25 percent annually in Australia.

Battery-storage costs will most likely follow a similar trajectory. As shown in the Chart 2 and Chart 3, AEMO forecasts strong growth in rooftop solar uptake, and expects battery storage installations to take off. Our guess is that these forecasts, as with many new technologies, will prove too conservative.

What does all this mean for Australia’s electricity market?

It means, in part, that demand for grid-supplied electricity from commercial-and particularly from residential customers-will probably continue to fall, thereby putting further pressure on coal-fired electricity-generator profits.

And it means that the increasing risk of stranded assets calls for the development of a long-term national electricity-sector transition plan. Such a plan, done right, would address vital issues that include network stability, reducing grid overinvestment, decarbonization and power plant site rehabilitation.

Tim King is IEEFA’s director of energy policy, Australasia.

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Solar ready to thrive without subsidy, says US Energy Secretary

02. September 2015 | Applications & Installations, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Markets & Trends | By: Ian Clover

Ernest Moniz says the Obama administration backs Democrats’ calls for an extension of the Federal ITC, but stresses the solar industry will grow even without further subsidy.

The solar industry in the U.S. is primed to grow and survive even without the need for subsidy support, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has said this week.

With the price of solar having fallen dramatically over the past few years, Moniz believes that the cost of electricity from rooftop solar arrays could fall to $0.06/kWh in some U.S. states very soon – a situation that would make solar “extremely competitive” with fossil fuel-based power generation sources.

Democrats in Congress are pulling hard for an extension of the Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which currently stands at 30% until January 1, 2017.

However, despite the Obama administration fully backing the goal of extending that 30% ITC further, Moniz is nevertheless sanguine about solar’s ability to survive free from subsidies.

“I certainly see solar growing, even without subsidy,” Moniz said. “The cost reductions have been incredible for the solar industry, making for an improved value proposition in many contexts.”

The Obama administration is in favor of supporting the extension of the ITC indefinitely, but a Republican-controlled Congress is likely to throw up roadblocks to stop that from happening. The issue, however, is not as simple as Democrats being in favor of renewables and Republicans in opposition – the growth of the wind industry has been rooted in many red states, prompting support for further subsidy support among Republicans in Congress.

pv magazine has explored this issue in dept in the September edition of the magazine. You can read more here.