Maria Gallucci's articles

Officials in Long Island, N.Y., are rebranding a promising yet largely overlooked policy instrument to ramp up the region's solar power capacity.

Last month, the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), the local utility, launched one of the nation's first CLEAN, or Clean Local Energy Accessible Now, programs.

The initiative uses the same feed-in tariff model that many credit for solar power booms in Germany, France and Spain—only with a different name.

Under the program LIPA pays solar operators a fixed rate of 22 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they feed back to the grid for 20 years. The goal is to add 50 megawatts of commercial-scale solar energy, enough to power 6,500 homes.

Proponents say feed-in tariffs are key to stoking the clean energy economy, because they help solar and wind compete with conventional fossil fuels, provide private investors with a stable investment environment and create local jobs.

But advocates have struggled to sell the program in the United States—a problem they blame in part on its loaded name.

A high-profile bill in Arizona to abolish sustainability efforts died last week, yet its defeat isn't deterring lawmakers in three other states from still trying to pass related policies into law.

The legislation seeks to outlaw states and their cities from endorsing or implementing the United Nations Agenda 21 principles of sustainable development. The list of 27 nonbinding principles, adopted by countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, is meant to guide policies to eradicate poverty and combat climate change, among other environmental threats.

In late March, the Arizona state Senate approved anti-Agenda 21 bill SB 1507, but the measure died on May 3, after House lawmakers failed to bring the legislation to a vote before the legislative session concluded that night.

In total, five states have tried and failed to pass such rules this year, with Arizona's battle being the most well known. Efforts in Alabama, Kansas and Louisiana are still alive.

The New York City Council this week adopted the country's most sweeping green building plan, approving citywide zoning regulations that encourage energy efficiency retrofits and widespread adoption of rooftop solar and wind.

The initiative, called Zone Green, will help the city slash annual energy costs of $15 billion and achieve its goal of trimming global warming emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The city's roughly one million buildings are responsible for almost 80 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, compared to 40 percent for the national average.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative policy group, has helped state lawmakers craft measures aimed at curtailing U.S. EPA air pollution rules, repealing cap and trade and teaching climate skepticism in schools, among many other things.

A future target could be renewable energy mandates, which are on the books in more than half of U.S. states. 

"I expect the issue to be discussed at one of our upcoming task force meetings," Todd Wynn of ALEC told InsideClimate News. "Discussions within the task force can, and do, lead to the development of ALEC model bills." Wynn directs the council's Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force.

At Rod Stevenson's sprawling country home in Santa Rosa, Calif., in Sonoma County, once-leaky walls and windows are now sealed tight for energy efficiency, and his roof and yard are glittering with two dozen solar panels.

"We expect to save about $10,000 a year," on electricity and heating bills, Stevenson says, a nearly 70 percent drop from last year.

Stevenson, 62, runs a successful, century-old family business that sells construction supplies and materials to control soil erosion in Northern California. But retirement was hanging over him and his wife. "I really wanted to get to the point where we could get our [utility] bill down to virtually nothing," Stevenson recalls.

America's greenhouse gas emissions are headed up again, driven by a recovering economy, federal government data show. The Northeast may be able to buck that trend thanks in part to cap-and-trade, the controversial system for curbing global warming gases that Congress and many state governments scorned in recent years.

According to a recent study, cap-and-trade and other measures to combat climate change and stimulate demand for renewable energy helped 10 Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states cut per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide 20 percent faster than the rest of the nation between 2000 and 2009.

"All of these efforts are bearing fruit," Ken Kimmell, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, told InsideClimate News. "We very much expect that that progress will continue," as the economy gains strength, he said.

The United States is winning the global clean energy race—at least in terms of luring investment in developing low-carbon technologies. But China appears to have vaulted past competitors to become the leading engine for green manufacturing jobs.

It's been a rough spell for electric cars, with automakers abandoning sales targets amid tepid demand, and Congressional Republicans trying to turn struggling battery and electric-car manufacturers into symbols of failed clean economy policies.

But that hasn't stopped Ecotality, a maker of charging equipment and the largest single grantee in the Energy Department's Vehicle Technologies Program, from pressing ahead with plans to install 14,000 electric vehicle charging stations in cities across the country. The company, backed by $115 million in stimulus money, is nearly halfway to that goal. So far, it has put 5,800 chargers in home garages and public parking lots as part of its three-year-old EV Project. 

But charging infrastructure is only half the battle; consumer acceptance is the other half. And while the number of charging companies and stations is proliferating—Pike Research forecasts 13,000 chargers by the end of the year and 1.5 million by 2017—there are just about 20,000 electric cars on U.S. roads.

That may unnerve advocates familiar with America's late-1990s experiment in electric vehicles. After models like GM's EV1 and Chrysler's Epic electric minivan failed to win enough buyers, the charging infrastructure was deserted. Much of it had been built by Ecotality North America, an Ecotality subsidiary, then called Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec).

Things are different now, said Don Karner, Ecotality's chief innovation officer and president of Ecotality North America, in an extensive interview with InsideClimate News.

Maryland's steel mills, ship builders and metal parts makers may help the U.S. challenge Europe and China in the global offshore wind manufacturing market—if and when the state gives the greenlight to offshore wind projects.

A new report by Environment Maryland, an advocacy group, found that deploying wind farms along Maryland's coast could create "thousands" of jobs for the nearly 900 companies that are well positioned to supply iron, steel, bolts and cables for turbines—and to secure the installations to the ocean floor and hook them to the grid.

The firms span nearly two dozen industries, including electric power transmission, freight trucking, shipping, financial services and plastics manufacturing, according to the report.

The study, "What Offshore Wind Means for Maryland," is an effort to get the state legislature to adopt policies that would spur creation of a local offshore wind industry.

The United States has neither a single turbine spinning off of its coasts, nor a single operating factory for offshore wind parts.

One of the country's biggest opponents of low-carbon fuel standards has fired a warning shot at attorneys general of Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, cautioning that a mandate requiring cleaner fuels would bury their states in costly lawsuits—as it has in California.

On Monday, the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a coalition that includes oil companies and trucking and transportation groups, sent letters to 11 attorneys general whose states are developing the regional Clean Fuels Standard, saying the initiative could be unconstitutional and is "unlikely to survive judicial scrutiny" if challenged in court. The standard would limit consumption of high-carbon fuels like oil sands crude, just as Canadian companies lay plans to pump tar sands oil to Northeast markets for the first time. The policy is expected to be completed next year.

The letters signal a ratcheting up of CEA's campaign to keep low-carbon fuel rules from  taking hold in the region. The alliance has strong ties to HBW Resources, a lobbying and public affairs firm whose clients include the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil industry trade group, and the Center for North American Energy Security, a group created to promote oil sands development.