Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Zane Selvans on Think Again: Drugs
- Bryan Keith on Think Again: Drugs
- Coal Finance for Climate Activists | Amateur Earthling on Boulder’s Energy Future Is Bright
- Hanna on Straight Talk on Climate Progress in California
- Coal Exports a Bigger Threat Than Tar Sands | Amateur Earthling on Obama Delays Keystone XL Pipeline
Linkstream
- PACE Lives!
The Federal Housing Finance Administration is taking public comments on Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, at the insistence of California's 9th Circuit court of appeals. Here's what I told them: Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, as have been initiated by many states and local governments, are a potentially transformative financing mechanism, enabling property owners to make good long term investments in energy efficiency and behind-the-meter renewable energy production. They address a market failure, in that buyers often do not appropriately integrate a property's energy costs into their price assessment. So long as the state and local PACE programs are - Climate Denial Instruction In Schools
Corporate interests are pushing a model bill in many states that would require schools to teach climate change denial. It sounds creepily reminiscent of the creationism/evolution mess from a few years ago. Except with the fossil fuel industry instead of the religious right behind it. Gah. - Vision Prize
Vision Prize is an expert poll on the nature of the climate risks we face, meant to demonstrate the degree of consensus (or the lack thereof) amongst those able to judge the evidence. It's put together by Carnegie Mellon University. Will be interesting to see what the results look like... - Open Climate Science Course
The University of Chicago has created an Open Courseware style Climate Science 101, with videos of the lectures and self-assessment materials online. It's aimed at non-science undergraduates. If you, or someone you know, want to get a little more in depth knowledge about climate science on their own time, it's a great resource. - Think Again: Drugs
A great roundup of the myths surrounding the Drug War, and the cogent arguments against continuing our ridiculous, harmful, and expensive policy of ideological prohibition.
- PACE Lives!
Twitterfeed
- Roughly 2/3 of all the humans who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today. 2 weeks ago
- What I learned about coal industry finances this week: http://t.co/UN1lXxRm 3 weeks ago
- In a room full of suits at NYU law. Everyone here wants to end the Reign of Old King Coal. Strangulation by purse strings. 4 weeks ago
- More thoughts on the dangers of giving in to a defeatist climate apocalypse narrative: http://t.co/Bwq276vQ from @AlexSteffen 1 month ago
- Authorizing US military to indefinitely detain citizens w/o trial would be unconstitutional, right? http://t.co/cRKXkpfb #tellmeimdreaming 2 months ago
Incoming Memes
Tag Archives: colorado
Is an Energy Transformation Afoot?
Almost immediately after we empowered Boulder to form a utility, a spate of articles appeared in the national press talking about the relative costs of coal and renewables, and the trends in those costs. There was Krugman’s Here Comes Solar … Continue reading
Xcel backing away from solar-thermal enabling San Luis Valley transmission
Xcel appears to be backing away from new transmission lines to the San Luis Valley. This infrastructure is required to implement the several hundred megawatts of solar-thermal generation that they proposed in their 2007 resource plan. Solar thermal is the … Continue reading
Posted in linkstream
Tagged colorado, energy, grid, infrastructure, power, puc, regulation, renewable, san luis valley, solar, thermal, transmission, xcel
2 Comments
Boulder energy watchdog kicked out of Xcel dockets at PUC
Leslie Glustrom is to be barred from intervening in the Colorado Public Utilities Commission dockets. She’s been doing the kind of discovery and oversight work that the regulatory body and the Office of Consumer Council should be doing on their … Continue reading
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Tagged coal, colorado, cpuc, democracy, energy, leslie glustrom, politics, puc, regulation, xcel
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Debating Boulder’s Power at the BGBG
Last Thursday (Sept. 8th) the Boulder Green Building Guild (BGBG) and Boulder Tomorrow hosted a debate of the 2B/2C ballot measures. The event was completely booked in advance through the BGBG’s website and the REI community room was packed and … Continue reading
Boulder’s Energy Future Is Bright
Last night I went to a presentation by the Renewables Yes technical and financial modeling team. They’ve put up a bunch of information about their modeling efforts on the web site. I’ve organized nine short videos of a previous iteration … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged boulder, climate, coal, colorado, electricity, energy, muni, natural gas, renewable, solar, utility, wind, xcel
20 Comments
Energy Efficiency and Economics at Walnut Mews
Our condo HOA had a meeting last fall, and somebody brought up selling the flat plate collectors on the roof that are part of our defunct solar thermal hot water system. The 750 gallon cylindrical storage tank rusted out in … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged architecture, boiler, boulder, building, colorado, efficiency, energy, finance, heater, insulation, PACE, public, solar
8 Comments
Boulder’s Passive Aggressive Building Standards
Usually when people say that “better is the enemy of good enough”, they’re pointing out that striving for perfection can be a distraction from just getting the job at hand done. There are other dynamics that involve these concepts too. … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged architecture, boulder, climate, colorado, design, economics, efficiency, energy, passivhaus, policy, public
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A Thousand Splendid Power Plants
Xcel Energy’s Valmont East Terraforming Station in Boulder, CO. As a side effect, it powers all the lights you see in the background. James Watt’s industrial revolution was fired by coal, is fired by coal, and shall be fired by … Continue reading
Links for the week of August 2nd, 2010
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
Posted in linkstream
Tagged boulder, climate, coal, colorado, energy, fire, government, photos, russia, sustainability
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