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Affordable Electric Cars Are Coming Soon, Study Says

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For many of us, purchasing an electric vehicle is still a pie in the sky dream. But that might be changing soon, if a new peer-reviewed study is correct that the cost of electric car batteries is falling much more quickly than we assumed.

Lithium ion batteries make up anywhere between a quarter and half the cost of electric cars today. By systematically reviewing over 80 cost estimates published between 2007 and 2014, researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute found that the cost of Li-battery packs used by leading manufacturers like Tesla and Nissan is falling by roughly 8 % per year. That’s similar to the rate that was seen with the nickel metal hydride battery technology used in hybrids like the Toyota Prius.

What’s more, it means that battery cost is rapidly approaching a threshold that could make the average Joe think seriously about trading in his gas guzzler. According to MIT Technology Review:

The authors of the new study concluded that the battery packs used by market-leading EV manufacturers cost as little as $300 per kilowatt-hour of energy in 2014. That’s lower than the most optimistic published projections for 2015, and even below the average published projection for 2020. The authors found that batteries appear on track to reach $230 per kilowatt-hour by 2018. Depending on the price of gas, the sticker price of an EV is expected to appeal to many more people if its battery costs between $125 and $300 per kilowatt-hour.

Of course, other factors matter when it comes to giving up gasoline, including EV ranges and the expected useful lifespan of the battery. Another recent study gives us hope on these fronts, as well: Analyzing power fade over time, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that even after batteries have lost 20 percent of their originally rated energy storage capacity, they could still meet the daily travel needs for more than 85% of US citizens.

We should take all of this with a healthy dose of skepticism-energy costs projections are often wrong-but still, electric vehicles do seem to be moving mainstream fast. If Elon Musk had it his way, we’d all be getting driven around by autonomous Teslas this summer, but more realistically, ten years out doesn’t sound like too much to hope for. [ MIT Technology Review]

Read the full study at Nature Climate Change.

Follow Maddie on Twitter or contact her at [email protected]

Study Shows That The Chemical Used To Clean Up BP Oil Spill Is Completely Toxic

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Researchers at the University of Alabama recently published a study suggesting that Corexit EC9500A, the primary oil dispersant used in the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is causing major harm to the local eco-system.

According to the study, Corexit damages epithelium cells in both humans and marine animals.

The study was published in PLOS ONE this week and studied the effect that the chemical had on the bodies of humans, zebrafish, and blue crabs.

“There were some 48,000 workers involved in the cleanup operations, and it is possible that workers were exposed to Corexit via inhalation. Cough, shortness of breath and sputum production were among symptoms expressed by workers, ” Veena Antony, one of the researchers said.

According to the study, “The evidence that Corexit causes structural and functional abnormalities in airway tissue includes dispersant-induced cell detachment, edema, contraction in cell diameter and increased permeability.”

” Corexit exposure led to an increase in NOX4 activation, and there is evidence that the increase of NOX4 is tied to increased apoptosis. On the other hand, HO-1 was also activated following Corexit exposure. We also noted that the introduction of HO-1 following injury served to remediate the effects of that injury,” Antony added.

At the time of the spill, many activists had spoken out against the use of Corexit, but it was used indiscriminately anyway, as if it was the only option. It is possible that these new studies could help to prevent this toxic chemical from being used in the future.

” In summary, our results indicate that respiratory epithelial surfaces across phylogenetic species are sensitive to injury by Corexit. However, the enzyme HO-1 protects against inflammation and cell death induced by Corexit. Unfortunately, the likelihood of another oil spill is high, and the need to use dispersal agents will remain. We propose that upregulating HO-1 may offer a novel therapeutic approach for treating dispersant-induced injury and apo’ptosis by enhancing the antioxidant and anti-apoptotic ability of the epitheliu m,” Antony said.

The video below is several years old, but it shows a prior independent study conducted by engineer Marco Kaltofen, which also shows the effects of Corexit.

John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.

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Zero Deforestation arrangement for Palm oil to be implemented by KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut

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Yum! Brands, the organization that claims KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, on Thursday reported a zero deforestation arrangement for its palm oil sourcing. The move came after forceful battles by ecological gatherings that argued that the restaurants weren’t doing what’s needed to guarantee the palm oil they used to cook food wasn’t connected to human rights misuses, obliteration of peat lands, and logging of rainforests.

The strategy sets December 2017 as focus for creating shields for palm oil sourcing. Yum! says it will just come from suppliers who block farmstead advancement in high carbon stock and high preservation esteem ranges, in the same way as rainforests and peat lands; have debate determination forms set up; offer traceability to the plant level; and evade underage laborers and constrained work.

The benchmarks apply Yum’s! worldwide fast food business, the importance it applies to every last bit of its restaurants.

Yum! has a comparable arrangement of rules for its paper and fiber sourcing.

The declaration was immediately accepted by Greenpeace, which battled against the organization’s mash and paper sourcing practices in 2012.

Rolf Skar, Woods Crusade Executive at Greenpeace USA., said, “Yum! Brands’ new palm oil policy is a good sign it’s listening to customers around the world who want rainforest destruction taken off the menu.”

He added, “more clearly define terms like ‘high carbon stock forest’ and ‘best management practices’ for peat lands in order to make sure change really happens on the ground.”

Nonetheless, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a support assembly discharged on Wednesday, a scorecard giving Yum! a zero out of 100 rank on its palm oil approach, which needed more from the organization.

“Yum! Brands seem to have good intentions with this commitment, “said UCS’s Lael Goodman in an announcement. “The problem is that palm oil is also a common ingredient in some the company’s baked goods and sauces – products that are prepared by a third-party vendor – and are not covered under the commitment. This is where the commitment loses steam.”

However, Goodman said that the approach would increase Yum! on UCS’s scorecard, moving it out of the base position it imparted to Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr, Dairy Ruler, and Domino’s.

“The company scored a zero as of yesterday, but today’s announcement will surely raise their score somewhat,” she stated.

“However, if Yum! Brands wants to be an environmental leader amongst fast food giants, the company should to extend the commitment to all forms of palm oil and bulk up its transparency efforts. Such transparency efforts include reporting the quantities of palm oil used and on the commitment’s implementation.”

Yum’s! dedication has been made much simpler as of recent years with the reception of zero deforestation arrangements by a percentage of the world’s biggest palm oil makers and dealers, including Brilliant Agri Assets, Wilmar, Cargill, Musim Mas, IOI, and Bunge.

These approaches have developed as a direct after effect of weight from backing gatherings and shoppers concerned over palm oil’s part in driving change of peat lands and rainforests for farms.

The damage was found mostly in Malaysia and Indonesia; however the business has its sights on growing in West and Focal Africa, the Amazon, Focal America, and different parts of tropical Asia.

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust

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From where I’m standing, the city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Between it and me, stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge.

Dozens of pipes line the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake. The smell of sulphur and the roar of the pipes invades my senses. It feels like hell on Earth.

Welcome to Baotou, the largest industrial city in Inner Mongolia. I’m here with a group of architects and designers called the Unknown Fields Division, and this is the final stop on a three-week-long journey up the global supply chain, tracing back the route consumer goods take from China to our shops and homes, via container ships and factories.

You may not have heard of Baotou, but the mines and factories here help to keep our modern lives ticking. It is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of “rare earth” minerals. These elements can be found in everything from magnets in wind turbines and electric car motors, to the electronic guts of smartphones and flatscreen TVs. In 2009 China produced 95% of the world’s supply of these elements, and it’s estimated that the Bayan Obo mines just north of Baotou contain 70% of the world’s reserves. But, as we would discover, at what cost?

Element of success

Rare earth minerals have played a key role in the transformation and explosive growth of China’s world-beating economy over the last few decades. It’s clear from visiting Baotou that it’s had a huge, transformative impact on the city too. As the centre of this 21st Century gold-rush, Baotou feels very much like a frontier town.

In 1950, before rare earth mining started in earnest, the city had a population of 97,000. Today, the population is more than two-and-a-half million. There is only one reason for this huge influx of people – minerals. As a result Baotou often feels stuck somewhere between a brave new world of opportunity presented by the global capitalism that depends on it, and the fading memories of Communism that still line its Soviet era boulevards. Billboards for expensive American brands stand next to revolution-era propaganda murals, as the disinterested faces of Western supermodels gaze down on statues of Chairman Mao. At night, multicoloured lights, glass-dyed by rare earth elements, line the larger roads, turning the city into a scene from the movie Tron, while the smaller side streets are filled with drunk, vomiting refinery workers that spill from bars and barbecue joints.

Even before getting to the toxic lake, the environmental impact the rare earth industry has had on the city is painfully clear. At times it’s impossible to tell where the vast structure of the Baogang refineries complex ends and the city begins. Massive pipes erupt from the ground and run along roadways and sidewalks, arching into the air to cross roads like bridges. The streets here are wide, built to accommodate the constant stream of huge diesel-belching coal trucks that dwarf all other traffic.

After it rains they plough, unstoppable, through roads flooded with water turned black by coal dust. They line up by the sides of the road, queuing to turn into one of Baotou’s many coal-burning power stations that sit unsettlingly close to freshly built apartment towers. Everywhere you look, between the half-completed tower blocks and hastily thrown up multi-storey parking lots, is a forest of flame-tipped refinery towers and endless electricity pylons. The air is filled with a constant, ambient, smell of sulphur. It’s the kind of industrial landscape that America and Europe has largely forgotten – at one time parts of Detroit or Sheffield must have looked and smelled like this.

Quiet plant

One of our first visits in the city is to a processing plant that specialises mainly in producing cerium, one of the most abundant rare earth minerals. Cerium has a huge number of commercial applications, from colouring glass to making catalytic converters. The guide who shows us around the plant explains that they mainly produce cerium oxide, used to polish touchscreens on smartphones and tablets.

As we are wandering through the factory’s hangar-like rooms, it’s impossible not to notice that something is missing. Amongst the mazes of pipes, tanks, and centrifuges, there are no people. In fact there’s no activity at all. Apart from our voices, which echo through the huge sheds, the plant is silent. It’s very obviously not operating. When asked, our guide tells us the plant is closed for maintenance – but there’s no sign of that either: no maintenance crews, no cleaning or repairs being done. When pushed further our guide gets suspicious, wonders why we are asking so many questions, and clams up. It’s a behaviour we’ll encounter a lot in Baotou – a refusal to answer questions or stray off a strictly worded script.

As we leave, one of our party who has visited the area before suggests a possible explanation: could local industry be artificially controlling market scarcity of products like cerium oxide, in order to keep rare earth prices high? We can’t know for sure that this was the case the day we visited. Yet it would not be unprecedented: in 2012, for example, the news agency Xinhua reported that China’s largest rare earth producer was suspending operations to prevent price drops.

One of Baotou’s other main exports is neodymium, another rare earth with a variety of applications. Again it is used to dye glass, especially for making lasers, but perhaps its most important use is in making powerful yet lightweight magnets. Neodymium magnets are used in consumer electronics items such as in-ear headphones, cellphone microphones, and computer hard-drives. At the other end of the scale they are a vital component in large equipment that requires powerful magnetic fields, such as wind farm turbines and the motors that power the new generation of electric cars. We’re shown around a neodymium magnet factory by a guide who seems more open than our friend at the cerium plant. We’re even given some magnets to play with. But again, when our questions stray too far from applications and to production and associated environmental costs, the answers are less forthcoming, and pretty soon the visit is over.

The intriguing thing about both neodymium and cerium is that while they’re called rare earth minerals, they’re actually fairly common. Neodymium is no rarer than copper or nickel and quite evenly distributed throughout the world’s crust. While China produces 90% of the global market’s neodymium, only 30% of the world’s deposits are located there. Arguably, what makes it, and cerium, scarce enough to be profitable are the hugely hazardous and toxic process needed to extract them from ore and to refine them into usable products. For example, cerium is extracted by crushing mineral mixtures and dissolving them in sulphuric and nitric acid, and this has to be done on a huge industrial scale, resulting in a vast amount of poisonous waste as a byproduct. It could be argued that China’s dominance of the rare earth market is less about geology and far more about the country’s willingness to take an environmental hit that other nations shy away from.

And there’s no better place to understand China’s true sacrifice than the shores of Baotou toxic lake. Apparently created by damming a river and flooding what was once farm land, the lake is a “tailings pond”: a dumping ground for waste byproducts. It takes just 20 minutes to reach the lake by car from the centre of the city, passing through abandoned countryside dominated by the industrial architecture on the horizon. Earlier reports claim the lake is guarded by the military, but we see no sign. We pass a shack that was presumably a guard hut at one point but it’s abandoned now; whoever was here left in a hurry, leaving their bedding, cooking stove, and instant noodle packets behind when they did.

We reached the shore, and looked across the lake. I’d seen some photos before I left for Inner Mongolia, but nothing prepared me for the sight. It’s a truly alien environment, dystopian and horrifying. The thought that it is man-made depressed and terrified me, as did the realisation that this was the byproduct not just of the consumer electronics in my pocket, but also green technologies like wind turbines and electric cars that we get so smugly excited about in the West. Unsure of quite how to react, I take photos and shoot video on my cerium polished iPhone.

You can see the lake on Google Maps, and that hints at the scale. Zoom in far enough and you can make out the dozens of pipes that line the shore. Unknown Fields’ Liam Young collected some samples of the waste and took it back to the UK to be tested. “The clay we collected from the toxic lake tested at around three times background radiation,” he later tells me.

Watch the black byproduct of rare earth mining pouring into the lake at Baotao (Credit: Richard John Seymour/Unknown Fields)

Unknown Fields has an unusual plan for the stuff. “We are using this radioactive clay to make a series of ceramic vessels modelled on traditional Ming vases,” Young explains, “each proportioned based on the amount of toxic waste produced by the rare earth minerals used in a particular tech gadget.” The idea is to illustrate the impact our consumer goods have on the environment, even when that environment might be unseen and thousands of miles away.

After seeing the impact of rare earth mining myself, it’s impossible to view the gadgets I use everyday in the same way. As I watched Apple announce their smart watch recently, a thought crossed my mind: once we made watches with minerals mined from the Earth and treated them like precious heirlooms; now we use even rarer minerals and we’ll want to update them yearly. Technology companies continually urge us to upgrade; to buy the newest tablet or phone. But I cannot forget that it all begins in a place like Bautou, and a terrible toxic lake that stretches to the horizon.

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Read the first two instalments in this series, whereTim Maughan and the Unknown Fields group visits the Chinese city of Yiwu, the real home of Christmas and explore the invisible shipping network that keeps the world running.
This trip was organised and funded by theUnknown Fields Division, a group of architects, academics and designers at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

I’d seen some photos before I left for Inner Mongolia, but nothing prepared me for the sight – The alien environment at Baotou lake

California Imposes First Mandatory Water Restrictions to Deal With Drought

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PHILLIPS, Calif. – Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered mandatory water use reductions for the first time in California’s history, saying the state’s four-year drought had reached near-crisis proportions after a winter of record-low snowfalls.

Mr. Brown, in an executive order, directed the State Water Resources Control Board to impose a 25 percent reduction on the state’s 400 local water supply agencies, which serve 90 percent of California residents, over the coming year. The agencies will be responsible for coming up with restrictions to cut back on water use and for monitoring compliance. State officials said the order would impose varying degrees of cutbacks on water use across the board – affecting homeowners, farms and other businesses, as well as the maintenance of cemeteries and golf courses.

While the specifics of how this will be accomplished are being left to the water agencies, it is certain that Californians across the state will have to cut back on watering gardens and lawns – which soak up a vast amount of the water this state uses every day – as well as washing cars and even taking showers.

“People should realize we are in a new era,” Mr. Brown said at a news conference here on Wednesday, standing on a patch of brown and green grass that would normally be thick with snow at this time of year. “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”

Owners of large farms, who obtain their water from sources outside the local water agencies, will not fall under the 25 percent guideline. State officials noted that many farms had already seen a cutback in their water allocations because of the drought. In addition, the owners of large farms will be required, under the governor’s executive order, to offer detailed reports to state regulators about water use, ideally as a way to highlight incidents of water diversion or waste.

Because of this system, state officials said, they did not expect the executive order to result – at least in the immediate future – in an increase in farm or food prices.

State officials said that they were prepared to enforce punitive measures, including fines, to ensure compliance, but that they were hopeful it would not be necessary to do so. That said, the state had trouble reaching the 20 percent reduction target that Mr. Brown set in January 2014 when he issued a voluntary reduction order as part of declaring a drought emergency. The state water board has the power to impose fines on local water suppliers that fail to meet the reduction targets set by the board over the coming weeks.

The governor announced what amounts to a dramatic new chapter in the state’s response to the drought while attending the annual April 1 measuring of the snowpack here in the Sierra Nevada. Snowpacks are critical to the state’s water system: They store water that falls during the wet season, and release it through the summer.

In a typical year, the measure in Phillips is around five or six feet, as Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Survey Program, indicated by displaying the measuring stick brought out annually. But on Wednesday, Mr. Brown was standing on an utterly dry field after he and Mr. Gehrke went through the motions of measuring a snowpack. State officials said they now expected the statewide snowpack measure to be about 6 percent of normal.

“We are standing on dry grass, and we should be standing on five feet of snow,” Mr. Brown said. “We are in an historic drought.”

Water has long been a precious resource in California, the subject of battles pitting farmer against city-dweller and northern communities against southern ones; books and movies have been made about its scarcity and plunder. Water is central to the state’s identity and economy, and a symbol of how wealth and ingenuity have tamed nature: There are golf courses in the deserts of Palm Springs, lush gardens and lawns in Los Angeles, and vast expanses of irrigated fields of farmland throughout the Central Valley.

Given that backdrop, any effort to force reductions in water use could be politically contentious, as Mr. Brown himself acknowledged. “This will be somewhat of a burden – it’s going to be very difficult,” he said. “People will say, ‘What about the farmers?’ Farmers will say, ‘What about the people who water their lawns?’ “

Within hours of Mr. Brown’s announcement, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is the House majority leader, announced plans to renew efforts in Congress to pass legislation requiring the building of two huge water facilities in the state. The efforts had been blocked by Democrats concerned that the water projects would harm the environment and damage endangered species of fish.

“The current drought in California is devastating,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Today’s order from the governor should not only alarm Californians, but the entire nation should take notice that the most productive agriculture state in the country has entered uncharted territory.”

“I’m from the Central Valley, and we know that we cannot conserve or ration our way out of this drought,” he said.

The newly mandated 25 percent cut is in relation to total water use in the state in 2013. Cuts will vary from community to community, reflecting that per capita water use reduction has been better in some areas than others. In addition, the state and local governments will offer temporary rebate programs for homeowners who replace dishwashers and washing machines with water-efficient models.

Mr. Brown said the state would impose water-use restrictions on golf courses and cemeteries and require that nonpotable water be used on median dividers.

Lawns consume much of the water used every year in California, and the executive order calls for the state, working with local governments, to replace 50 million acres of ornamental turf with planting that consumes less water.

The order also instructs water authorities to raise rates on heavy water users. Those pricing systems, intended to reward conservers and punish wasters, are used in some parts of this state and have proved effective, state officials said.

Felicia Marcus, the chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, said that California would leave it to local water providers to decide how to enforce the reductions on homeowners and businesses. She said she anticipated that most of the restrictions would be aimed at the outdoor use of water; many communities have already imposed water restrictions on lawns and gardens, but Ms. Marcus suggested they had not gone far enough.

“We are in a drought unlike one we’ve seen before, and we have to take actions that we haven’t taken before,” she said. “We are not getting the level of effort that the situation clearly warrants.”

Mark W. Cowin, the director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the state would tightly monitor compliance, in the hope that would be enough to accomplish the 25 percent reduction. If it is not, the order authorizes water suppliers to penalize offenders.

“We are looking for success, not to be punitive,” Mr. Cowin said. “In the end, if people and communities don’t comply, there will be repercussions, including fines.”

Obama Unveils Smart Plan To Combat Climate Change While Training 75,000 Vets For Jobs

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while speaking in Utah, President Obama announced a new program that will combat climate change while training 75,000 veterans for jobs in the solar industry.

The President said:

I am announcing a new goal to train 75,000 workers to enter the solar industry by 2020. As part of this, we’re creating what we’re calling a solar ready vets program that’s modeled after some successful pilot initiatives that have already been established over the last several years.

It’s going to train transitioning military personnel for careers in this growing industry at ten bases including right here at Hill, and as part of this effort we’re also going to work with states to enable more veterans to use the post-9/11 GI Bill for solar job training.

It’s one of the many steps we’re taking to help nearly 700,000 military veterans and spouses get a job. In fact, about thirty percent of the federal workforce is now made up of veterans. I’ve said it before, and I think employers are starting to catch on if you really want to get the job done, hire a veteran.

The plan is smart because it trains tens of thousands of transitioning military personnel and spouses for a civilian job in an industry that is growing ten times faster than the national average. The president also pointed out the military bases that get a substantial percentage of their energy from the sun save money that can applied towards other goals and missions.

The nation has undergone a dramatic shift from a president who fought a foreign war for oil (Bush and Iraq) to a forward thinking president who is using growing clean energy industry industries to train veterans of the Bush wars for good paying jobs.

The plan that the President unveiled isn’t just good politics. It’s also common sense. No veteran should have to take a low-paying service industry job because they can’t find anything else. It is part of our national obligation to everything possible to help those who served succeed when they return home.

President Obama is creating opportunities for today’s veterans to acquire the jobs of tomorrow.

Want to be happy? Make friends with plants

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I walk over to my office window. My house plants greet me. I say hello to each of them. I look over their leaves. I visually check the moisture level of the soil and add water where necessary. I love them. I pay very close attention to one of them, a small maple tree I found in my front overgrown flower garden in Black Mountain as I was cleaning it out last spring. It would have never flourished in that spot so I pulled it up and planted it in a small pot. I’ve been carrying it around for almost a year now. It’s just getting ready to shoot out some new leaves for spring, and this is very exciting to me, as I almost killed it in an overheated window at my office in Rhode Island during my short stay there.This is my routine nearly every day when I get up for work. Those plants really do make me happy. They are living things, each with it’s own character. These plants give me something beautiful to turn in my chair and look at whenever I’m pondering the solution to an IT problem or a I need to take a mental break. I sometimes look to them for inspiration when I’m working on a story. They make me smile.

The natural anti-depressant

I recently found an article floating around the web indicating that plants, and tending to them, actually do a lot more than the credit they’re given. Working with plants outdoors, and the soil in particular, is especially beneficial for mental health, stress reduction, and happiness. A specific type of bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, found in soil increases the production of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin production is key to happiness. The effects of coming in contact with this bacteria while gardening were found to produce the same results as anti-depressants such as prozac. Serotonin also strengthens brain function and is found to increase learning capacity. House plants are also linked to decreasing stress and anxiety, especially in the workplace and at school.

Plants are the champions of Small Acts, without even having to try

It doesn’t stop there. House plants actually have a positive impact on your health and improve overall wellbeing. It’s pretty common knowledge that plants absorb C02 and turn it into oxygen, but they also clean the air of other indoor pollutants. NASA conducted very thorough research about the topic and concluded that “both plant leaves and roots are utilized in removing trace levels of toxic vapors from inside tightly sealed buildings. Low levels of chemicals such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde can be removed from indoor environments by plant leaves alone.” Some of our polluted outdoor air comes inside with us, not to mention all the Volatile Organic Compounds, found in many household products, polluting our indoor air. A few houseplants are a great remedy to this health hazard.

Stay focused

Plants improve concentration and memory. They provide a calming effect while working that helps improve accuracy and focus, which allows for higher quality results. A study found that being around plants or nature while performing a task can “increase memory retention up to twenty percent.” I strongly believe that the natural beauty and better air quality that my plants provide helps me tremendously as a “telecommuting” employee.

Healing

We often see plants and flowers in hospital rooms, but they really do provide added benefits aside from a nice aesthetic touch. Plants inside or visible outside the hospital room were proven to decrease the time it takes for patients to heal. Horticulture therapy, where patients are tasked with taking care of plants, has proven to be effective in the rehabilitation of patients following brain injuries and other conditions.

Improve your relationships

I find this one to be one of the most profound reasons to adopt some houseplants or get outside and do some gardening. People that spend extended time around plants were found to have stronger relationships with others and are more likely to be willing to help others. Interacting with and caring for plants increases our aptitude for compassion and empathy. I believe our world needs more empathy, or, the ability to understand how others feel. Maybe then, there would be a little less judgement, and a little more acceptance. It is especially important to teach these skills to children, as their behavior and actions define the future. Caring for plants helps kids understand the fragility of life and external environments, but event as adults, we could all stand to cultivate a little more compassion and appreciation for our planet.

Return on investment

The great thing is that plants are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to the benefits. Investing in a few for your window sill is a Small Act worth your time and money.

Fishbowl Faucet Encourages Water Conservation – Or Else

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So you’re a conservationist, eh? Can you prove it? Can you stop washing your hands before this fish runs out of water? For his appropriately titled Poor Little Fishbowl Sink, designer Yan Lu created a very direct incentive to minimize water usage – when you turn the faucet on, the water level in the fishbowl decreases. It reminds us how precious this resource is, and how our everyday actions can affect the creatures around us. It also reminds us of our childhood pet goldfish, aww. Read on to learn more about this fish-traumatizing faucet.

In case you were worried, the water sources for the fish bowl and the faucet are separate: you wouldn’t be washing your hands in fish excrement or sending soapy water back into the bowl. The fish’s “aquarium” is simply designed to lower its water level until you stop washing your hands, although it never drains completely. Still, we can’t help but feel that this rapidly changing environment must be tough for the little guy (which, come to think of it, makes his situation pretty similar to the real world). Poor little fish indeed.

Spain Got 47 Percent Of Its Electricity From Renewables In March

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CREDIT: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez

Spain is getting the vast majority of its electricity from carbon-free sources, the country’s grid operator reported on Tuesday.

CREDIT: ree.es

According to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), the Spanish peninsula got 69 percent of its electricity generation in March from technologies that produce zero carbon emissions – that is to say, renewable energy plus some of its nuclear power. Nuclear as a whole provided 23.8 percent of the country’s electricity in March, while 47 percent came solely from renewable sources.

Most of the renewable electricity being generated in Spain comes from wind, which alone provided 22.5 percent of the country’s electricity last month. Wind often competes with nuclear for the title of Spain’s top electricity generation source overall – in fact, though nuclear pulled through in March as the top source of electricity, wind has overall provided more electricity to Spain in the entirety of 2015. From January to March, according to REE, wind provided 23.7 percent of electricity generation while nuclear made up 22.7 percent.

Spain has long been a leader in renewable energy, just recently becoming the first country in the world to have relied on wind as its top energy source for an entire year. The country is attempting to use wind power to supply 40 percent of its electricity consumption by 2020, according to CleanTechnica.

At the same time, Spain is also developing other renewable sources of energy, particularly solar photovoltaic. Though it currently only accounts for about 3 percent of electricity generation, Spain’s solar industry is one of the largest in the world, according to Al Jazeera. In 2012, it reported that solar power accounted for almost 2,000 megawatts of energy. Comparatively in the United States, there were 3,313 megawatts of solar photovoltaic installations that same year.

Though the U.S. may have more solar cumulatively, Spain’s solar makes up more more of the smaller country’s electricity use as a whole. In 2013, solar accounted for about 0.2 percent of the net electricity produced in the United States, according to the Institute for Energy Research. That same year, solar accounted for 3.1 percent of Spain’s total electricity, according to REE.

Still, Spain’s renewable energy story has not been all roses. The country’s aggressive goals have been heavily subsidized by its government, and the government has fallen into economic distress as a result. Specifically, the New York Times reported in 2013 that Spain’s tariff deficit had built up a cumulative debt of about €26 billion ($35 billion). Since then, however, the country has slashed its subsidies, putting the bulk of costs back on the power utilities themselves.

The subsidy cuts happened last summer, and since then renewable energy has not significantly grown in the country as a whole. But it has grown substantially in at least one part of Spain – the tiny island of El Hierro, which is nearing its goal to be powered 100 percent by wind and water.

Obama Is About To Announce A Big Job Creation Move For The Solar Industry

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CREDIT: Shutterstock

President Obama is scheduled to announce new initiatives to help bolster the country’s solar workforce on Friday, including a goal to add 75,000 solar workers by 2020, and a new program aimed at providing solar training to veterans.

The goal to add to the nation’s solar workforce adds to the President’s last commitment to solar training, which promised 50,000 solar workers by 2020. According to a statement released by the White House, the solar industry is adding jobs “10 times faster” than the rest of the economy, and prices for solar installations are falling, having declined 12 percent in the past year alone.

The announcement, which will be made during a visit to Utah’s Hill Air Force Base, will also lay out plans for a program aimed at providing military veterans with skills to enter the solar workforce. Dubbed “Solar Ready Vets,” the program will be a joint-venture between the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, and will take place at 10 military bases across the country.

Solar Ready Vets, the White House says, is “based on the specific needs of high-growth solar employers, is tailored to build on the technician skills that veterans have acquired through their service, and incorporates work-based learning strategies.” The program will train service members in all facets of solar installation, teaching them how to size solar panels, connect electricity to the grid, and deal with building codes.

According to the White House, the Department of Veterans Affairs will help by encouraging state agencies to make G.I. Bill funding available to veterans interested in the program. The Department of Labor will also work to make sure that veterans are aware of job opportunities within the solar industry.

The President’s announcement comes just days after the United States submitted its climate commitments to the United Nations, which promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2025. A report issued Monday by the NewClimate Institute said that meeting carbon-reduction goals would create nearly one million “green jobs” by 2030 in the United States, China, and the European Union.

MIT Climate CoLab seeks high-impact ideas on how to tackle climate change

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The MIT Climate CoLab has announced 22 contests that seek high-impact ideas on how to tackle climate change.

A project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Collective Intelligence, the Climate CoLab seeks to harness the knowledge and expertise of thousands of experts and non-experts across the world to help solve this massive, complex issue.

“As systems like Linux and Wikipedia have shown, people from around the world – connected by the Internet – can work together to solve complex problems in very new ways,” says MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and principal investigator for the Climate CoLab project. “In the Climate CoLab, we’re applying this approach to one of the world’s most difficult problems – climate change.”

The Climate CoLab has a rapidly growing community of over 30,000 members from across the world. Anyone is welcome to join the platform to submit their own ideas, or comment on and show support for other proposals on the site.

Together, the contests cover a broad set of sub-problems that lie at the heart of the climate change challenge, including: decarbonizing energy supply, shifting public attitudes and behavior, adapting to climate change, geoengineering, transportation, waste management, reducing consumption, and others.

The popular U.S. Carbon Price contest is returning this year, seeking innovative policy and political mobilization strategies on how to implement a carbon price in the United States. Serving as advisors for this contest are former U.S. Secretary of State, George P. Shultz; former U.S. Rep. (R-SC) and current director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative Bob Inglis; and former U.S. Rep. (D-IN) and current president of Resources for the Future, Phil Sharp.

A number of contests are run in collaboration with organizations such as the World Bank Negawatt Challenge ( Urban Energy Efficiency), the MIT Sloan Latin America Office ( Energy Solutions for Latin America), and the City of Somerville, Massachusetts ( Atypical Solutions for Going Carbon Neutral).

In addition, this year the Climate CoLab team announced a new set of contests in which people can create climate-action plans for major countries and for the whole world. In these contests, members combine proposals that have been submitted in other contests and use a suite of climate modeling tools to project the real-world climate impacts of the plans they create.

All contest winners will have an opportunity to present to people who can support the implementation of their ideas, including policy makers, business executives, and NGO and foundation officials. They will also be invited to showcase their proposals at MIT this fall, where a $10,000 grand prize will be awarded. See highlights from last year’s Climate CoLab conference at climatecolab.org/conference2014.

In addition to submitting ideas, the Climate CoLab also welcomes people from around the world to offer feedback and support proposals they find the most promising.

Submissions are due by May 16 at 11:59:59 p.m. EDT. Enter soon to receive feedback from Climate CoLab community members and the experts who are overseeing the contests. To submit a proposal, or read and comment on other proposals, visit climatecolab.org.

Designer Creates Amazing Billboards that Can House the Homeless

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Slovakian firm Design Develop has come up with an innovative solution to provide shelter for the homeless: billboards. Project Gregory is a compact, triangular dwelling that could be funded in part by the proceeds of selling advertising space on its exterior walls.

Homelessness is a complex global issue, and finding solutions involves the coordination of many fields and services. Project Gregory seeks to provide alternative dwellings for the homeless that double as billboards and advertising spaces. Billboards are expensive to install, maintain and rent, and Project Gregory optimizes the structures so that they can double as living spaces.

To fit out the structure, the billboard dimensions are preserved, and a set of steps are added. The interior floor plan is informed by the resulting triangular shape. The interior is divided into two rooms, the first containing an entrance hall, a kitchen with a small office desk, and a raised bed set above a storage space. The second room contains the bathroom, with a washbasin located over a wardrobe, a toilet, and a shower corner. The structure consists of a wood frame with a concrete base, with impregnated OSB board facing, wooden or steel stairs, and two windows.

Project Gregory is designed for the city of Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, where the project would be easy to implement thanks to existing energy and water grids. The designers believe the billboard housing project could be applied elsewhere though, as long as adequate study and consultation was carried out beforehand. The project would be funded by firms and investors that could help with construction or acquire long-term rental of the advertising space. The Project Gregory website states that it is a nonprofit platform and is freely available for cities to implement free of charge. It’s designed as an “open source” project, so architects, designers, and artists can build upon it to create new designs and layouts.

Source: Inhabitat

Photos by: Project Gregory

EPA Approves GMO Weed Killer Enlist Duo in Nine More States ” EcoWatch

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Ignoring the World Health Organization’s (WHO) conclusion that the crop chemical glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved the glyphosate-containing herbicide Enlist Duo for agricultural use in nine more states. It had previously been approved for use on genetically engineered crops in six states.

Enlist Duo’s active ingredients are glyphosate and 2,4-D, both of which have been shown to increase the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“This poorly conceived decision by EPA will likely put a significant number of farmers, farm workers and rural residents at greater risk of being diagnosed with cancer,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at Environmental Working Group. “The agency simply ignored a game-changing new finding from the world leading cancer experts, and has instead decided the interests of biotech giants like Dow and Monsanto come first.”

Last month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the WHO, elevated its risk assessment of glyphosate to “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on a review of the evidence by a panel of 17 leading oncology experts.

Glyphosate is the most used pesticide in the U.S. The bulk of it is applied to genetically engineered corn and soybean crops. It is also the main ingredient in Monsanto’s signature weed killer RoundUp.

EPA’s decision will allow Enlist Duo to be sprayed on fields of genetically engineered corn and soybeans in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and Oklahoma. It was previously approved for use in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

“Instead of taking steps to protect the public from toxic chemicals, the EPA has only sped up the pesticide treadmill that will now put millions more people at risk,” added Faber. “These toxic herbicides easily make their way off farm fields and into the air and water we and our children breathe and drink.”

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Drought-Stricken California Exempts Big Oil and Big Ag from Mandatory Restrictions ” EcoWatch

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The April 1 snowpack assessment in California, which set an all-time record for lowest snowpack levels in the state’s history, finally spurred Governor Brown’s office to issue an executive order to residents and non-agricultural businesses to cut water use by 25 percent in the first mandatory statewide reduction in the state’s history.

But some groups have been exempted from the water restrictions, specifically big agriculture, which uses about 80 percent of California’s water, and oil companies. Democracy Now! speaks with Adam Scow of Food & Water Watch California on the new mandates and the implications of exempting some of the biggest water users in the state.

Food & Water Watch California criticized Governor Brown for failing to cap water usage by oil companies and corporate farms, which grow water-intensive crops like almonds and pistachios, most of which are exported out of state or overseas, reports Nermeen Shaikh of Democracy Now! “In the midst of a severe drought, the governor continues to allow corporate farms and oil interests to deplete and pollute our precious groundwater resources,” says Scow.

Shaikh and fellow reporter, Amy Goodman, then turn to Mark Hertsgaard, author of a new book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, andwhose latest story is “How Growers Gamed California’s Drought.” Hertsgaard, an expert on big agriculture and the drought in California, discusses how the price of water is far too low and how we’re still wasting far too much water. “If we priced [water] properly, which means a little bit higher, there’s enormous strides California could be taking with water efficiency,” says Hertsgaard. “We could essentially wipe out the effects of the drought.”

But right now we have billionaire farmers like Stewart Resnick bragging about record profits and record production in water-intensive crops like pistachios, almonds and alfalfa, while poorer communities where farmworkers live “don’t have water coming out of their taps anymore,” says Hertsgaard.

Watch the full clip here:

Chorus of Outrage as Obama Administration Approves Arctic Drilling for Shell Oil

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Environmental activists expressed shock and outrage on Tuesday after the U.S. Department of the Interior upheld a 2008 lease sale on the Arctic’s Chuchki Sea, opening the door for continued oil exploration in a region long eyed for drilling by Shell Corporation and increasingly strained under the effects of climate change.

The decision opens up 30 million acres in the Chuchki Sea to fossil fuel exploration and drilling, a move which state and national green groups called “unconscionable.”

“Our Arctic ocean is flat out the worst place on Earth to drill for oil,” said Niel Lawrence, Alaska director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The world’s last pristine sea, it is both too fragile to survive a spill and too harsh and remote for effective cleanup.”

In January 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Interior Department had violated the law when it sold those 2008 leases-a deal that came about during George W. Bush’s presidency, but was upheld two years later by the Obama administration.

The 2014 decision ordered the Interior Department to reconsider the leases. A month later, the department admitted that drilling in the Chucki Sea was likely to have devastating consequences, with a spill risk of 75 percent or more.

“It is unconscionable that the federal government is willing to risk the health and safety of the people and wildlife that live near and within the Chukchi Sea for Shell’s reckless pursuit of oil,” said Marissa Knodel, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth. “Shell’s dismal record of safety violations and accidents, coupled with the inability to clean up or contain an oil spill in the remote, dangerous Arctic waters, equals a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Ignoring its own environmental review, the U.S. Department of the Interior has opened the door for drilling in the remote and iconic Arctic Ocean,” said the Sierra Club on Tuesday.

“It’s shocking that the Department of the Interior would knowingly move forward with a plan that has a 75 percent chance of creating a major spill in the Chukchi Sea. We can’t trust Shell or any other oil company with America’s Arctic,” Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, added. “Shell has proposed an even dirtier and riskier Arctic drilling program for this summer. The Obama administration has seen the impacts of what a major oil spill looks like.”

The Bureau of Ocean Management will next conduct an environmental assessment on Shell’s exploration plan for the Chuchki Sea, which could take 30 days or more.

The Chuchki Sea is home to an estimated 2,000 polar bears and serves as the feeding grounds for migratory gray whales.

“The industrial oil development that Interior hopes will flow from its decision to approve the Chukchi lease sale gives us a 75 percent chance of a large oil spill and a 100 percent chance of worsening the climate crisis,” Rebecca Noblin, Alaska director for the Center for Biological Diversity, added. “I don’t like those odds.”

Why Keystone XL Opponents Care About a Canadian Pipeline

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TransCanada on Thursday announced a two-year delay to its plans to move the Canadian tar sands. The company is cancelling its plans to build a controversial export terminal in Quebec, citing environmental concern over the endangered beluga whale. This means a delay to plans for finishing the Energy East pipeline, now set for 2020. In the meantime, TransCanada will search for a new location for its port.

For once, then, Canadian oil news isn’t about the TransCanada-owned Keystone XL, which has faced a six-year delay as the Obama administration sits on a decision to issue a permit. At least not directly, anyway. Energy East, once completed, would be even bigger than Keystone XL, delivering 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day, compared to Keystone’s 800,000 barrels. As its name implies, the pipeline would run from the Alberta tar sands eastward to the shipping lanes of the Atlantic coast.

Not only are Keystone and Energy East similar battles, but proponents (and opponents) often tie the two pipelines’ fates together. Keystone opponents say building that pipeline would ensure tar sands extraction continues at a rapid pace, setting the world on track for severe climate change. Proponents argue that Keystone doesn’t matter either way, because other pipelines like Energy East make tar sands development inevitable. If the United States doesn’t build its pipeline, they say, Americans will miss out on the economic benefits. “We don’t think there’s any way that the oil will stay in the ground,” Matt Letourneau, a spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said last year. “Certainly the market will find a way.”

But so long as there are delays, tar sands development isn’t inevitable because Energy East’s future, like Keystone’s, is far from settled. Oil companies are still in the middle of working out how to get the landlocked tar sands to the coasts for refining and shipment, and during their delays on multiple fronts, Keystone isn’t a futile fight.

The delay could provide a boost to organizers trying to delay other tar sands projects. Each of these pipelines face a similar environmental playbook: Delay as long as possible in the hopes that it becomes unprofitable or impossible for companies to pursue their plans. Keystone has faced years of delay, and now Energy East faces its own uncertain future. Environmentalists weren’t the only reason for TransCanada’s change of plans. Because oil prices are low right now, companies have little incentive to pursue their plans to extract costly tar sands for little profit.

TransCanada still has a strong incentive to find a new port and finish construction. Oil prices surely will rebound eventually, making the tar sands profitable once again.

“I don’t think you can look at this as a major impediment to the future of oil sands development but it certainly speaks to the opposition to pipelines, the anxiety about shipments of oil and, of course, to the increasing importance of environmental protection to the public,” Andrew Leach, an economist with the University of Alberta, said. “The beluga is an iconic species, so I think the writing was on the wall for this once the risk to habitat was made clear, in particular in Quebec.”

In the short-term, however, this is a win for environmentalists. And it may even help them in their fight against Keystone.

Rebecca Leber is a staff writer for The New Republic.

SolarCity launches community microgrids with Tesla batteries

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Mar 27, Technology/Energy & Green Tech

SolarCity, well-known for rooftop solar systems, is expanding to so-called microgrids, larger power systems that can be tapped by communities when the power grid goes down.

The systems, which add generators and software to manage the power to standard solar panels, will include Tesla Motors batteries to store the energy generated. While the owner can tap the solar power for daily use, the main purpose is to maintain electricity in the event of a natural disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane.

“There has been a dramatic increase in severe weather events the last few years – climate-related, almost certainly – and its led to more grid outages,” SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass noted, pointing to the storm known as Sandy that hit the Northeast last year as a prominent recent example.

The company is targeting cities that are in the line of fire for such catastrophic events for the new service.

“Traditionally, microgrids have been used in campuses, medical facilities and military bases, and we will pursue some of those opportunities if they become available,” said Daidipya Patwa, who is leading SolarCity’s microgrid efforts, “but our primary target is municipalities, communities and areas with a weak grid or no grid at all.”

That focus opens up a potentially large market, said GTM Research analyst Shayle Kann.

“Any municipality in a region that is prone to some kind of natural disaster … they have a few key locations that they need to keep running in the event of an outage or a natural disaster – a community center where they’re going to house people or police stations,” the analyst said.

This will also be the first major effort overseas for SolarCity, as the company shops its microgrids to island nations with poor power grids. While Bass said the bulk of its microgrid business will focus on the United States and North America, he noted that it will be the first international work for SolarCity aside from its charitable work to provide lights at schools in the developing world.

These types of systems have the potential to make a big difference in the developing world, Kann said.

“Ultimately, it seems like this solution could be used to electrify rural areas in the developing world or to provide better reliability in places where the grid goes down a lot,” the analyst explained.

SolarCity will attempt to squeeze into a market segment with a product better than home tinkerers can build and less expensive than larger rivals.

“The approach to microgrids to date has largely been either piecing something together from some small equipment vendors or you go at the high end, to a GM or Siemens and pay upward of $10 million for a massive solution that may not be, from a budget standpoint realistic, especially for a rainy-day solution,” Bass noted.

SolarCity hopes to tap economies of scale to accomplish its goal: The San Mateo company acquired Fremont solar panel manufacturer Silevo last year and plans to build a large solar panel factory in New York, while Tesla Motors – run by SolarCity Chairman and investor Elon Musk – builds a massive “Gigafactory” for the lithium-ion batteries that the microgrid systems will use.

“(Tesla is) manufacturing advanced battery technology at a scale that’s just not seen anywhere else, and we absolutely expect that to drive the cost down over time,” Bass said.

While SolarCity seems to have a road map that will allow it to build microgrids for interested customers, the question will be whether there will be enough communities willing to take the plunge, Kann said.

“The operative question is how big this will be for SolarCity, and more broadly, how big the microgrid market will be in general,” he said.

©2015 San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)

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China thinking about solar power plants in space – report – SeeNews Renewables

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China thinking about solar power plants in space – report

Xi’an. Author: Muhammad Taslim Razin. License: Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

March 30 (SeeNews) – A bunch of scientists from China are currently considering the pros and cons of building a solar power station some 36,000 kilometres (22,369 miles) above Earth, Xinhua News Agency said Monday.

The idea may become reality as the world’s number-one carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter is seeking to reduce its smog and greenhouse gas emissions. A space-based solar power station is expected to generate roughly ten times more electricity compared to photovoltaic (PV) panels on the ground, Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) member, Duan Baoyan, was cited as saying.

The concept involves launching a super spacecraft, equipped with bigger-than-usual solar modules, on a geosynchronous orbit. The output would be transmitted by way of microwaves or laser beams to reach the ground. This could become possible only when the efficiency of this wireless power transmission technology climbs to around 50%, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the International Academy of Astronautics member, Wang Xiji, has said.

According to Xinhua’s report today, another challenge to developing a commercially-viable space power station may be its weight, estimated at more than 10,000 tonnes. To solve the problem, China will have to come up with a cheap heavy-lift launch vehicle, as well as very thin and light solar panels.

Actually, China is not the only one to think about producing electricity in space. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (TYO:7011) earlier this month successfully performed a ground demonstration test of long-distance wireless transmission of 10 kW power. It wants to use that technology in its space solar power systems (SSPS). The US has also carried out studies in connection to space solar power technology over the past few years.

This Texas town will get all of its energy from solar and wind

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This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

ews that a Texas city is to be powered by 100-percent renewable energy sparked surprise in an oil-obsessed, Republican-dominated state where fossil fuels are king and climate change activists were described as ” the equivalent of the flat-earthers ” by U.S. Senator and GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.

“I was called an Al Gore clone, a tree hugger,” says Jim Briggs, interim city manager of Georgetown, a community of about 50,000 people some 25 miles north of Austin.

Briggs, who was a key player in Georgetown’s decision to become the first city in the Lone Star State to be powered by 100-percent renewable energy, has worked for the city for 30 years. He wears a belt with shiny, silver decorations and a gold ring with a lone star motif, and is keen to point out that he is not some kind of California-style eco-warrior with a liberal agenda. In fact, he is a staunchly Texan pragmatist.

“I’m probably the furthest thing from an Al Gore clone you could find,” he says. “We didn’t do this to save the world – we did this to get a competitive rate and reduce the risk for our consumers.”

In many Texas cities, the electricity market is deregulated, meaning that customers choose from a dizzying variety of providers and plans. In Houston, for example, there are more than 70 plans that offer energy from entirely renewable sources.

That makes it easy to switch, so in a dynamic marketplace, providers tend to focus on the immediate future. This discourages the creation of renewable energy facilities, which require long-term investment to be viable. But in Georgetown, the city utility company has a monopoly.

When its staff examined their options last year, they discovered something that seemed remarkable, especially in Texas: Renewable energy was cheaper than non-renewable. And so last month, city officials finalized a deal with SunEdison, a giant multinational solar energy company. It means that by January 2017, all electricity within the city’s service area will come from wind and solar power.

In 2014, the city signed a 20-year agreement with EDF for wind power from a forthcoming project near Amarillo. Taking the renewable elements up to 100 percent, SunEdison will build plants in West Texas that will provide Georgetown with 150 megawatts of solar power in a deal running from 2016 or 2017 to 2041. With consistent and reliable production the goal, the combination takes into account that wind farms generate most of their energy in the evenings, after the sun has set.

Despite its proximity to the left-leaning Austin, Georgetown is not instinctively progressive. Its main selling point is the old-school charm of its historic core, which credibly bills itself as the Most Beautiful Town Square In Texas. It is not a natural political companion to Burlington, a similar-sized city in liberal Vermont that last year reportedly became the first city in the U.S. to use 100-percent renewable energy.

Though Georgetown is home to Southwestern University, a liberal arts college, Briggs said that more than 40 percent of residents are over 50. The area is conservative and much of the positive reaction to the announcement has come less because the citizens are desperate to help the planet than because they are getting the security of a fixed rate plan that will be similar to the current cost of about 9.6 cents per kilowatt-hour and will protect them against the impact of fluctuations in the price of fossil fuels.

Chris Foster, Georgetown’s manager of resource planning and integration, said that since the announcement he has “gotten calls from businesses as far away as California and Maryland wanting to know: What does it cost to move over here? [They say:] ‘We’re out here trying to be renewable; it’s cheaper over there to be renewable.'”

He said that for manufacturing companies conscious of their carbon footprint, basing themselves in a place that offers 100-percent wind and solar energy would be an easy way to boost their green credentials.

In a state that loves to bash Washington, what little criticism there has been, Briggs said, has stemmed from the federal tax breaks handed out to encourage renewable energy.

“Well then, we should never have mass transit and quit farming … that argument, while it’s there, is really pretty shallow,” he says.

Fearing an imminent end to the government’s generosity, private green energy companies have scrambled to build facilities. At the same time, in recent years a glut of Chinese-made panels has made solar power more cost-effective. And while West Texas is an oil driller’s paradise, it is also sunny and gusty, making it a perfect corridor for renewable energy.

The region bordering New Mexico is one of the prime solar resource sites and the wind whistles across the plains to such an extent that, as Scientific American pointed out last year, the state is America’s largest wind power producer – as well as leading the nation in the production of crude oil and the emission of greenhouse gases.

Renewable energy also uses much less water than traditional power generation – a bonus in a state where half the land and more than 9 million people are affected by drought conditions, though Briggs said that for Georgetown, water conservation was only a “side benefit.”

Greg Abbott, formerly Texas attorney general and now governor, repeatedly sued the federal government over its attempts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, the chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Bryan Shaw, said there is a “lack of links between greenhouse gases and the climate.” Shaw was appointed by former-Gov. Rick Perry, a notorious climate-change skeptic and a prospective Republican White House candidate for 2016.

Yet amid the rhetoric, denial and promotion of corporate interests and economic prosperity ahead of environmental concerns, over the past decade Texas lawmakers authorized the spending of $7 billion of taxpayers’ money on the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone, a vast infrastructure project to connect West Texas wind power to major urban areas.

So Texas has the weather, the infrastructure, and – certainly in small places such as Georgetown – the current market conditions to be greener. But a state report last September cast a cloud over the future of renewable energy in Texas, saying it was not reliable or extensive enough to meet peak demand. “Renewables need conventional power backup,” it said.

Fred Beach, assistant director for policy studies at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute, said that, “At the moment, unfortunately, the legislature is pretty clueless when it comes to renewables,” and is failing to get the most out of their investment.

Beach suspects that Big Oil will fret that Georgetown’s pioneering move is the start of a trend, and polluting, inefficient coal power plants will be pushed out of service by more deployment of wind and solar energy. But he believes that would likely prove good news for natural gas generators, who will be relied upon in the scorching summer months when demand is highest.

Ultimately, he said, in a practical-minded place like Texas, the best way to encourage the use of green energy is to appeal to heads rather than hearts and make a strong business case, as happened in Georgetown.

Russ Dickson, co-owner of an antiques shop on the main square, said he was delighted at the move.

“This is a pretty conservative community and to see a conservative community step up [and do this] makes me feel good about the future,” the 61-year-old said.

Outside, Jon Klopf, a barber, sat on a bench enjoying a splendidly sunny Thursday afternoon.

“They were just looking out for the cheapest deal. That’s just business,” the 50-year-old said. “I don’t really think we should be relying too much on oil, even though they have to right now. That don’t last forever.

“Sun will, though. Long as the sun comes up, the wind will blow.”

Why Low Oil Prices Won’t Stop The Growth Of Renewable Energy

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” Why Low Oil Prices Won’t Stop The Growth Of Renewable Energy“

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CREDIT: AP/Matt Young

Oil prices might be very low, but that’s not going to take away from investments in renewable energy.

That’s at least the consensus from Citigroup, the latest investment researcher to say clean energy won’t be slowed by cheap oil, Bloomberg reported Monday. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have also predicted that the oil price slump won’t affect renewable energy growth.

There’s a simple reason for this: Oil and renewables aren’t really in competition. Oil powers cars and heaters, and renewable energy – by and large – powers the electricity grid. (As we get more electric cars, transportation could increasingly rely on renewable energy, but we’re still pretty far from widespread electric car adoption.)

The United States generated merely one percent of its electricity with oil in 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration. Globally, only 11 countries get more than 20 percent of their electric power from oil, Bloomberg reported.

Natural gas, not oil, is in competition with renewable energy. The fastest-growing source of energy, natural gas-powered plants now provide more than a quarter of the U.S. electricity supply. However, if low oil prices cause suppliers to limit production, natural gas prices could actually go up, making renewable energy even more cost effective.

Renewable sources, including hydropower, contributed about 12 percent of the U.S. electricity supply last year.

Citigroup’s optimistic prediction about renewables comes at a time when clean energy investment is growing across the globe. Worldwide, investment in renewable energy went up 17 percent last year, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.

“Once again in 2014, renewables made up nearly half of the net power capacity added worldwide,” Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP, said in a statement.

The cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy has been a huge debate in recent years. While conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity say we can’t afford to go renewable, others say we can’t afford not to. More than two-thirds of today’s proven fossil fuel reserves need to still be in the ground in 2050 in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change, according to the International Energy Agency.

Fortunately for clean energy proponents, prices for both wind and solar have fallen dramatically in recent years. The price of a residential solar system dropped by nearly half in the past five years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Likewise, the cost of wind energy has dropped nearly 60 percent since 2009. Research shows during that same time period, jobs in the U.S. solar industry have grown by 85 percent.

In fact, the promise of job growth in the United States has been one of the strongest counterarguments to the perceived cost of renewable energy. As the United States and other countries announce carbon-cutting measures in advance of the U.N. climate talks in Paris later this year, it’s becoming clearer what clean energy job growth could look like on a global scale.

In “Assessing the Missed Benefits of Countries’ National Contributions,” also released Monday, scientists at the NewClimate Institute said that carbon-reduction commitments could create a million new “green jobs” in the United States, China, and the European Union by 2030.

“It is an economic incentive to act on climate for local benefits on fossil fuel imports, jobs and air pollution,” Niklas Höhne, one of the report’s authors, told ThinkProgress. “For many situations renewables are cost competitive with fossil fuel power plants. If then in addition the co-benefits are taken into account, they are often the preferred choice.”

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