Recently in Commentary
The Well Next Door:
Culver City, home to NPR, Sony Pictures, and a hopping restaurant and gallery scene, is getting nervous.
Commentary:
A major transmission project now being considered by the BLM and other agencies could bring 3,000 megawatts of power from Wyoming to cities in California, Nevada, and Arizona, removing an obstacle to much greater expansion of wind turbines in Wyoming's eagle habitat.
The Well Next Door:
The days of the gushers are over -- but fracking, acidization, horizontal drilling, and other recent "enhanced recovery techniques" are giving new life to old L.A. oilfields.
Commentary:
If a recent cease and desist letter that Southern California Edison (SCE) sent to rooftop solar activists was intended to make them go away, it seems to be having the opposite effect. Which could be a metaphor for utilities and rooftop solar itself, when you get right down to it.
Commentary:
Homeowners who have a little bit of extra cash when they install solar panels are often encouraged to add battery storage to their home system. But a Southern California utility just delivered some upsetting news to owners of those storage systems.
Commentary:
A group of environmental and economic democracy activists charges that utilities are targeting Latino politicians to restrict access to rooftop solar despite the fact that most California Latinos support more solar. And the groups are using satire as a weapon.
Conservation:
A southern California wildlife biologist sentenced today for handling eagles without a license may have performed similar tasks for wind power companies while he was unlicensed, ReWire has learned. John David Bittner, who runs the Ramona-based Wildlife Research Institute, pled guilty to violations of the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA) in April.
Commentary:
We've heard some critical reaction to our piece on the EPA's newly upgraded renewable energy mapping tool. We agree with that criticism. Here's why.
Wind:
The paper published an editorial calling for state and federal agencies to give wind energy a far bigger slice of the pie when portioning out the California desert. Here's why they got it badly wrong.
Climate Change:
In the wake of recent revelations that Google is supporting one of the most stubborn climate change denialists in the Senate, climate activists plan are planning a demonstration Wednesday at Google's headquarters in Mountain View.
Commentary:
ReWire started reporting on renewable energy in California a year ago this month, and the reaction since has been mainly quite gratifyingly favorable. Still, at the end of a week in which we've asked some very pointed questions about solar facilities in the desert, it's worth talking about why we spend our time watchdogging an industry whose manifest goal is to save the planet from the ravages of climate change.
Commentary:
The looming war between old-school utilities and rooftop solar seems to be developing a battlefront in Arizona, and "California billionaires" are the new villains.
Climate Change:
His long-awaited Climate Action Plan contains some overdue good ideas -- and some outdated bad ones.
Commentary:
The paper this week covered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to allow a wind facility to kill a condor, and among other problems the story contained a howler of a misstatement about wind development in the Mojave.
Commentary:
Most of California's low-income residents still have to pay their utility bills without help from the sun, but a non-profit solar installer is trying to change that a little bit at a time.
Commentary:
Both Germany and California set solar power production records this week, but it hardly seems fair to Germany to mention California's milestone in the same paragraph.
Commentary:
A report by a leading utility trade association says that rooftop solar could spell doom for utilities, and recommends that power companies push for a clampdown on energy democracy.
Commentary:
If we cut down on coal use here and then ramp up coal exports, we undermine our own progress on climate change. Whether the coal is burned in Utah or Uzbekistan makes little difference to rising sea levels
Commentary:
It's a little far afield from the Golden State, but ReWire got an emailed press release last week that piqued our interest. The release, concerning a water pipeline project in New Mexico, made the claim that powering that pipeline with solar and hydroelectric power would make that pipeline "eco-friendly." But something about the release raised our skepticism.
Commentary:
The McCoy Solar Energy Project in the California desert got a huge boost this week, as California Governor Jerry Brown certified the 750-megawatt NextEra solar development in Riverside County for expedited legal review under his recent, undemocratic reforms to the state's landmark environmental law.
News and analysis about renewable energy in California. Blog host Chris Clarke is an environmental writer of two decades standing. He currently lives in Joshua Tree and can be contacted at: rewire@kcet.org.
- Wind Power
- PV and Solar Thermal
- Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI)
- Watts and Watt-Hours, Kilo and Mega
- 'Enough To Power X Thousand Homes'
- The Grid
- Distributed Generation
- Conservation and 'Negawatts'
- Grid Storage
- PACE Loans, Feed In Tariffs and Net Metering
- Base Load and Peaking Power
- Capacity Factor
- Renewable Portfolio Standards
- Biomass
- Transportation and Renewable Energy
- Geothermal
