Economy and Policy
The Struggle For Fuel Economy
Five years ago, the Obama Administration announced that the Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE standard for the year 2025 would be 54.5 miles-per-gallon. They estimated that improving the average fuel economy of cars and light-duty trucks to this level would save car owners $1.7 trillion at the pump and eliminate more than 6 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
A Giant Dam Removal Project
In early April, the U.S. Government, the states of Oregon and California, and the utility Pacificorp signed an agreement that will lead to the removal of four dams on the Klamath River by 2020, amounting to one of the largest river restoration efforts ever undertaken in the United States.
Food Waste And Behavior
In a recent article in Science entitled “Waste not, want not, emit less,” Danish researchers looked at the problem of food waste in both developed and developing countries. Overall, about a third of the world’s food is lost or wasted, but the reasons for this vary in different parts of the world.
Solar Rooftops Looking Better Than Ever
The price for installing solar panels continues to get lower and lower as volumes increase and technology improves. There are also more ways than ever to get solar installed with leases and other creative financial arrangements.
Recycling CO2
The X Prize Foundation provides financial incentives for innovative solutions to various technical challenges. Topics have ranged from developing spacecraft to trying to create a real-world version of the Star Trek tricorder. Last year, the foundation launched a $20 million challenge to come up with technologies by the year 2020 that turn carbon dioxide captured from the smokestacks of power plants into useful products.
Making It Rain
It seldom rains in the United Arab Emirates. Some areas of the UAE receive less than five inches of rain annually, and often little to none at all during the summer months when temperatures can climb above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. These conditions have led to water security concerns particularly in Dubai, a blossoming international destination, as well as in rural, farming communities.
The State Of The Air
For the past 17 years, the American Lung Association has analyzed data from official air quality monitors to compile the State of the Air report. The State of the Air 2016, which was released late last month, revealed some troubling statistics about the health of the air here in the United States.
Mandatory Solar In San Francisco
California leads the nation in the use of solar energy with well over half the country’s solar electric capacity. The state is the home of several of the largest thermal solar generating plants in the world and between those and multiple utility-scale photovoltaic plants, California utilities get more than 5% of their power from the sun.
Tiny Forest Pests Cause Big Problems
Each year, more than 25 million shipping containers enter the U.S. All too often, highly destructive forest pests are lurking among their imported goods. Wood boring insects arrive as stowaways in wood packaging, such as pallets and crates. Other forest pests and pathogens hitchhike in on foreign-reared plants bound for American nurseries.
Electric Car Boom
The introduction of the Tesla 3 and the 400,000 advanced orders for the vehicle have put the spotlight on electric cars recently. But despite all the buzz, electric cars are sill only a tiny piece of the US car market: about 0.66 percent last year.
The BP Oil Spill
In 2010, an explosion on the BP-owned Deepwater Horizon drilling rig released more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the oil was recovered, burned, or dispersed at sea, while some washed up onto the shorelines of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
Electric Buses And Trucks
We hear a great deal about electric cars these days. Will people buy them? Are they worth it? And, of course, there is the tremendous buzz surrounding Tesla’s forthcoming moderately-priced car. But there is also lots of activity in electrifying larger vehicles, including garbage trucks, city buses, and medium-sized trucks used by freight companies like FedEx.
Preventing Toxic Algal Blooms
We have talked about the growing problem of toxic algal blooms on a number of occasions. The increasing occurrence of these blooms has been associated with rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels as well as the presence of wastewater nutrients and agricultural fertilizers in rivers, lakes and reservoirs. The most notable incident occurred in the summer of 2014, when algae contamination in Lake Erie left 400,000 residents in Ohio and Michigan without water for 72 hours.
Clean Fossil Fuel Electricity
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar power are getting cheaper all the time and are, in many places, competing head to head on price with traditional fossil fuel generation. The ultimate goal is to replace polluting energy sources entirely, but even under the most optimistic scenarios, fossil fuel plants aren’t just going to disappear very quickly.
Human-Caused Earthquakes
Oklahoma has had its share of disasters over the years. It has seen tornado outbreaks, massive wildfires, huge dust storms and even onslaughts of tumbleweeds. But one thing it was not known for is earthquakes.
Coral Bleaching On The Great Barrier Reef
It was already well-known that coral bleaching was a serious problem in the Great Barrier Reef, but extensive aerial surveys and underwater dives have now revealed the shocking extent of the problem.
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