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U.S. energy infrastructure revamp may unlock $6 trillion market: Kerry
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday the United States could potentially unlock a $6 trillion energy market by revamping the country’s fractured electricity grid, a move that he said would boost the competitiveness of renewable energy. Kerry addressed the opening event of Climate Week NYC, a day before over 120 heads of state were due at the United Nations to address a summit on climate change and national plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions. While Kerry lauded progress on addressing climate change by the Obama administration, he said the country has a huge opportunity to scale up the use of cleaner energy by modernizing what he called its inefficient electricity infrastructure. [ read more … ]
Kerry urges world leaders to set ‘ambitious goals’ for emissions treaty
Kerry’s comments at the opening of Climate Week events here were his second in as many days pledging that the United States is moving ahead domestically and pushing others to do more. He touted the Obama administration’s plans to regulate power plant emissions and claimed the United States has done more to cut carbon in the past five years than in the past 20 combined. “It doesn’t cost more to deal with climate change. It costs more to ignore it and put our head in the sand and continue down this road of obfuscation and avoidance. And we need to make it clear to the people of this country,” Kerry said. [ read more … ]
Calif. pension fund vows to increase clean energy investments 150%, calls for price on carbon emissions
The California State Teachers’ Retirement System announced Friday that it would increase its investments in low-carbon generation and technologies to $3.7 billion within five years, up from $1.4 billion today. The investment could grow to several times that amount if a price on carbon is established, fund executives said. CalSTRS, as it is known, is the world’s largest educator-only pension fund, with roughly $188 billion in investments. It provides pensions and other benefits to California’s 868,000 public school teachers and their families. [ read more … ]
Iowa State awarded $1M to improve wind turbines
Engineers at one university have the chance to make a big difference in the wind energy industry. According to a media release, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded engineers at Iowa State University $1 million to study how high-strength concrete can be used to build taller wind turbine towers. [ read more … ]
Responding to Fukushima fallout, Germany and Japan explore different paths
The 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant — the premise of a new Brookings report — served as the backdrop to Friday’s discussion as each expert detailed how both countries had incorporated green energy in a nuclear-energy-hesitant atmosphere. “Germany has remarkable consensus on the overall objectives they want to achieve,” said John Banks, one of the authors of the report. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.