Green Options

When President Obama signed the American Recovery Act, he alloted 20% of the funds to be used for developing a green infrastructure, water and energy efficiency improvements and other environmentally innovative projects. And Delaware’s aging water infrastructure is smiling because of it.

The U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that up to $32 million dollars of Recovery Act funding will be used to expand the harvest of hydroelectric power. “There’s no one solution to the energy crisis, but hydro-power is clearly part of the solution and represents a major opportunity to create more clean energy jobs,” said Secretary Chu.

The Environmental Protection Agency has granted California’s waiver request that will allow the state to enforce strict greenhouse gas emissions standards on cars beginning with the present model year. California first applied for the waiver in 2005, but was denied several years later. Now, the EPA grants the waiver based on the need for California to improve its air pollution conditions.

Invoking the now-familiar messages heard throughout both his campaign and much of his presidency, President Obama implored the U.S. Senate to move forward with a climate bill.

Editor’s Note: The is a guest contribution by Danny Kennedy, President of Sungevity. This is part of a series from the CEO’s of major solar companies. You can follow the complete series here.

Sometimes it is hard to contemplate what a good news story our industry – solar sales and installation – and the broader clean energy economy really represents. I was reminded on Monday at the graduation ceremony for the Oakland Green Collar Jobs Corps.

Three more car companies received sizeable loans from the federal government yesterday, but don’t worry; it’s not another bailout. In fact, the$8 billion is just the start of a larger $25 billion project called the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (ATVM for short) that was thought up back in 2007 and funded by Congress in late 2008 during the Bush administration. The project, overseen by the Department of Energy, is a federal grant and loan initiative bent on providing [...]

The League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club launched a new television ad “amplifying President Obama’s call” for Congress to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

When it comes to environmental news, doom and gloom often rules the day. And it’s easy to get discouraged. But scientists from Yale University say most polluted ecosystems can recover in as little as 5 or 10 years.

The study means it’s not too late to turn things around if societies commit to cleanup, restoration and sustainability, according to Yale’s analysis of 240 independent studies. The findings appear in this month’s issue of the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.

Many rumors have been circulating regarding President Obama’s stance on illegal drug use. Some advocates project the president will legalize marijuana; some critics think he will continue the failed policies of the Bush administration in Latin America. The President’s actual stance on drug policy falls somewhere in between.

For consumers who support E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) and drive a flex-fuel vehicle, E85 became a little easier to find today when the 2,000th E85 pump opened today in Davie, Florida a suburb of Miami. The station is owned by U-Gas, which has brought most of the E85 infrastructure to Florida. As part of the celebration, the station offered E85 for $1.00 a gallon at not only this station, but all stations where U-Gas sells E85.

Willie Urbieta, President of U-Gas is a huge supporter of ethanol and said during the press conference, “For me personally, it feels really good when I fuel up to know that I’m not sending money to countries that are not that friendly to us.”

Listening to NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, there was a segment in which some environmentalists lamented Obama’s new fuel economy standards as being a small drop in the bucket for what needs to be done to solve our climate problems.

While this is true, two comments made by Harvard University Professor, Robert Stavins, during that segment struck me as weird and based in something less than reality — a kind of academic fantasy if you will. At the time, I was driving and the comments slid out of my mind. But last night an old friend from college brought it up again in a Facebook thread and it got me thinking more in depth about it.