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Jeff Bezos Commits $10 Billion to Address Climate Change
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and the world’s richest man, said on Monday that he was committing $10 billion to address the climate crisis in a new initiative he called the Bezos Earth Fund. The effort will fund scientists, activists and nongovernmental organizations, he said in a post on Instagram. Mr. Bezos, who has been pushed by Amazon employees on climate issues, said he expected to start issuing grants this summer. [ read more … ]
Wind Energy
Wind energy gives American farmers a new crop to sell in tough times
Across this central northern county, wind turbine blades slowly slice the cold air over winter-brown fields. The 67 wind turbines of the Meridian Way Wind Farm straddle dozens of farms and ranches, following the contours of the land and the eddies of the wind above it. The turbines are tall enough that their size is hard to gauge from cars driving by. Their impact on the surrounding landowners is less hard to measure. [ read more … ]
Car Rule
Trump’s tailpipe rollback would boost emissions — study
President Trump’s rollback of vehicle fuel economy standards would pump an additional 654 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere compared with tailpipe standards set by President Obama, according to new research. The analysis by the Rhodium Group, an economic consulting firm, looked at the rollback’s cumulative impact on greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption.
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The Trump administration struggles with regulatory math
The Trump administration is having a little trouble with numbers. Chiefly, Trump officials don’t seem to be able to get the math to work for some of the administration’s biggest environmental regulatory rollbacks. If they don’t figure it out soon, the White House’s promise to undo signature Obama-era climate and air pollution regulations before the November election will fall flat. [ read more … ]
Climate
US doubled renewables capacity since 2010: factbook
Power-generating capacity from renewable energy — including solar, wind and utility-scale hydropower — has doubled in the U.S. since 2010, while generation has jumped 77% in that time, according to a new report from BloombergNEF (BNEF) and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE). The Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, the eighth annual edition, notes that even as the economy grew over the past decade, greenhouse gas emissions dropped. In five years, year-over-year energy consumption even fell, thanks to more efficiency measures. [ read more … ]
Wheeler: Severe climate scenario is ‘fear propaganda’
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told a Brazilian newspaper that a severe climate scenario used regularly in scientific assessments is responsible for “fear propaganda.” Wheeler twice raised concerns about the so-called Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5, or RCP 8.5, in an interview with the news outlet Folha de S.Paulo during a trip to Brasília, Brazil, earlier this month. That’s the most pessimistic climate modeling scenario used by international and U.S. climate scientists to estimate the possible risks of climate change. [ read more … ]
Commentary
The Decade That Made Clean Energy
A decade ago, our nation’s energy sector looked very different than it does today. The United States was heavily dependent on foreign oil; electric vehicles were little more than a dream, and renewable energy was a far cry from the industry driver it is today. When history looks back on the early 2010s, the rise of clean energy will be a defining aspect. It embodies the labors undertaken in concert by our public and private sectors. And through the hard work of everyday American ingenuity, the United States has changed for the better. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.