A Small New York Town Plans a Profitable, 100% Renewable Energy Future
A community choice program and a lack of natural gas are enabling Marbletown to achieve 100 percent renewable energy and tackle 100 percent renewable energy —while saving money.
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
With advances in technology, the pathways to 100 percent renewable energy are becoming clear. As a result, the central challenge has become less about how to get there, and more about how to pay for it.
The town of Marbletown, in New York's Hudson River Valley, is finding that problem is solving itself.
Marbletown is a town of 5,500 people covering 55 square miles on the edges of the Catskills...
Two Numbers: One Matters, the Other Gets All the Attention
Garvin Jabusch This morning, in the realm of those who follow such things, the world became aware of two newsworthy numbers, 69,000 and 400. The former number is how many jobs were added to the U.S. economy in May according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); the latter is how many parts per million (ppm) in our atmosphere are represented by carbon. You can guess our opinion: 400 parts per million is a far more significant milestone than the apparent ‘bad news’ of America adding 69,000 more jobs. The jobs number is, at best, banal ephemera....
The Microeconomics of Green Jobs
Tom Konrad Ph.D. CFA Much fuss has been made about green jobs. Do they exist, and are more “brown” jobs displaced for every green one? Given all the political rhetoric, it’s not surprising that there is also considerable confusion about green jobs. There should not be. While pinpointing the actual number of jobs created or destroyed by any particular policy will always be fraught, the underlying microeconomics are rather simple, and understanding those microeconomics can make it clear if a given policy will be a net creator or destroyer of jobs. While there are many considerations that should be...
The Ontario Feed-in Tariff For Alternative Energy
Last month, I wrote about how Ontario, North America's 6th largest jurisdiction by population, had tabled a Green Energy Act to boost the alternative energy industry's growth in the province. In that post, I mentioned that officials would soon release the rules for a feed-in tariff (FIT) system. FITs, which pay fixed rates for renewable power, are all but absent in North America, although they are popular incentive in Europe. Germany's FIT is largely responsible for that country's dominance in solar PV today despite mediocre sun conditions. Ontario released the draft rules and proposed prices for...
Why We Need More Energy in the Economy But Less in the Atmosphere
Garvin Jabusch Preface: As per my usual, this post is more or less a narrative, and is definitely not math-centric. But, still, nothing quite conveys the stark reality of a thing like its governing equation. So, two of those found their way in here, but both are short and explained in English. With that, let’s look at why energy is so good. And bad. Any system in nature, including the human economy, is bound by a simple fact: it can only thrive and grow in proportion to the energy inputs it has access to. Energy equals growth. In economic...
Is The Big Win For The Liberals In Canada Also A Big Win For...
Jim Lane Liberals sweep to victory in Canada; Trudeau to become Prime Minister, pledging sharp increases in infrastructure investment and a renewed focus on clean technology. In Canada, the Liberal party, under the leadership of 43-year old Justin Trudeau, swept to victory in the Canadian federal elections. As of 6am Eastern time, the Liberals have won 184 seats 14 seats more than needed to form a majority government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party won in 99 ridings, a loss of 60 seats, while the New Democratic Party has reeled in 44 seats, a...
AltEnergyStocks Endorses Elizabeth Warren For President
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA, Editor
Past Endorsements
AltEnergyStocks.com has endorsed a candidate in all the US Presidential races since 2008 (Obama, followed by Obama in 2012, Clinton in 2016, and a generic endorsement of congressional Democrats in 2018.
Despite the long string of Democratic endorsements, AltEnergyStocks this site does not automatically endorse Democratic or liberal candidates. We are issue driven, and all our endorsements to date have been purely based on the policy positions of the candidates.
It is simply a sad fact about the Republican party that they have not fielded a conservative who actually cares about conservation of the environment...
Shifting the Cost of Pollution
by Debra Fiakas CFA The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to review the recently enacted MATS Rule - Mercury & Air Toxics Standards that went into effect at the end of 2011. At least two dozen states and forty utility companies have filed suit against the EPA over the rule, which is intended to cap mercury and other toxic emissions as well as particulates. The rules particularly impact power plants that use coal-fired boilers to generate electricity. The EPA provides an interactive map to see where these plants are located. They are predominantly in the eastern half...
Trump Administration Flip-Flops On Oil Refinery Waivers Again, Farm Groups Protest Again
by Jim Lane
In Washington, what must have become a weary if vigilant posse of the nation’s biofuel and farm advocates are out on the hustings again this week, over a fresh attack on the US Renewable Fuel Standard, this one led by officials in the Trump Administration, if a story reported by Bloomberg stands up against scrutiny.
What has been described as a “misinformation campaign spearheaded by Senator Ted Cruz” is seeking to overturn a unanimous court decision that would halt the Environmental Protection Agency’s abuse of Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs) under the Renewable Fuel Standard.
The backstory
In a unanimous panel, the...
What I Didn’t Say About Obama and New Energy
I was interviewed for a story on NPR's Morning Edition which aired Thursday. Tamara Keith asked me what Obama's election meant for Alternative Energy, and I felt many of my points were downed out by the others she interviewed. Here's what she didn't put in the story: Obama mentioned three challenges ahead in his acceptance speech. He said, "We know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime: two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century." Of these three challenges, two were thrust upon him, but he chose to...
A 10-Minute Guide to Obama’s New Energy Policy
Jim Lane Stopwatch photo via BigStock A major push from Obama on energy. From DOE: “Liquid fuels demand can be sufficiently reduced so that biomass can meet all liquid fuel needs.” What’s up? What is an Energy Security Trust, anyway? The Digest’s 10-Minute Guide tells all. In an address at the Argonne National Laboratories on Friday, President Obama said: “You see, after years of talking about it, we’re finally poised to take control of our energy future. We produce more oil than we have in 15 years. ...
Trick and Treat: Energy loans under review, as Hallowe’en looms
Jim Lane The Obama Administration got tricked, and handed out some bad energy loan candy. Turns out that the Washington press corps, and House Republicans, were asleep on the job, too. Until the money ran out, that is. We’re not sure if there’s been any more perfect timing for an Obama Administration announcement, than the news that it will start up an investigation of the DOE loan guarantee program just as Hallowe’en weekend got underway. Hallowe’en, is of course, the time of disguise, the celebration of the macabre, and the ghostly return of the...
Clean Energy Finance Experts United Against Trump
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA This website, AltEnergyStocks.com, endorsed Barack Obama for President in 2008 and 2012. In those two elections, we based our endorsements on a point-by-point analysis each candidates' energy policies, favoring the candidate who expressed the strongest support for policies to transition our economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels. This year, the comparison is so stark a point-by-point comparison hardly seems worth the exercise. Here are a few quotes from the candidates' websites that drive the difference home: On Climate Change Trump: "I think it's ridiculous, we've...
Trump to Health, Education, Small Business, and the Environment: You’re Fired!
Jim Lane Good-bye ARPA-E, DOE, Loan Guarantee program, Energy Star, OPIC, USTDA, NEA, and the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program. Even Big Bird gets the guillotine. In Washington, the White House released its budget requests for 2018, a high-level, 62-page overview of President Trump’s strategy for “Making America Great Again”. Departmental impact In order of percentage impact, the departments are as follows. Defense: Up $52B or 8 percent Veterans Affairs: Up $4.4B or 6 percent Homeland Security: Up $2.8B or 7 percent Small Business Administration: Down $43M or 5 percent Health & Human Services: Down $15.1B...
350.org’s Smart New Campaign
Garvin Jabusch Many parallels exist between the college campus divestiture campaigns of the 1980s and today. Both were/are seeking to apply intense student and community pressure to persuade boards of trustees to get endowment monies out of investments in businesses or locations perceived as undesirable. In the '80s it was South Africa and Apartheid that students objected to. Back then, one could almost conceive of college students versus a beleaguered South African government as something of a fair fistfight between entities with comparable chances of winning popular opinion and thus investment dollars to their side. And indeed the students...
The Utility Death Spiral: Beyond The Rhetoric
by Lynne Kiesling Unless you follow the electricity industry you may not be aware of the past year’s discussion of the impending “utility death spiral”, ably summarized in this Clean Energy Group post: There have been several reports out recently predicting that solar + storage systems will soon reach cost parity with grid-purchased electricity, thus presenting the first serious challenge to the centralized utility model. Customers, the theory goes, will soon be able to cut the cord that has bound them to traditional utilities, opting instead to self-generate using cheap PV, with batteries to regulate the intermittent...
