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Energy Efficiency Policy After ARRA--Access to Capital is Not Enough

October 13, 2011 by Shari Shapiro
with 230 views
0

My loyal readers may have been surprised (or relieved) by my hiatus from publishing.  I was not idle, however.  I led a study on Energy Efficiency Policy in New Jersey and Pennsylvania on behalf of the Department of Energy-funded Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster for Energy Efficient Buildings.  I... [read more]

Increasing Rates of Technology Adoption

October 11, 2011 by Alex Trembath
with 290 views
4

Via Sonia Arrison at Volokh Conspiracy:New technologies are almost always adopted by the rich first, but over time they eventually reach everyone, and the historical record shows that the distribution of new technology is speeding up, not slowing down. For instance, it took forty-six years for one-quarter of the population to get... [read more]

Why Don't More Businesses Save Money Through Energy Management?

September 26, 2011 by David Thorpe
with 319 views
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ichard Rugg, the Director of Carbon Trust Programmes, really can't understand why more organisations are not taking advantage of the free advice available from the Trust. Because at relatively low cost a wide range of industrial, commercial and public sector organisations can cut their energy bills by up to 25% if only they took energy management seriously. Payback periods can be as low as two months - and then it's into the profit zone. [read more]

Are India's Nuclear Deals Going South?

July 22, 2011 by Dan Yurman
with 425 views
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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in India this week to pressure India to open its nuclear energy markets by changing its domestic supplier liability laws. If she is successful, it would give American vendors hunting licenses to bid for massive nuclear reactor contracts said to be worth $150 billion over the next several... [read more]

David Livingston - Cancun: Wax, Feathers, and Climate Change

November 30, 2010 by WattHead Guest Contributor
with 550 views
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By David LivingstonContributor at Americans for Energy LeadershipWhile it looks increasingly likely that the same dynamics which undid the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit are again present in Cancun, it is far too early to eulogize international approaches to climate change mitigation. One area that the developed and developing world... [read more]

$100 billion in 1000 words

November 24, 2010 by Gernot Wagner
with 476 views
0

The Copenhagen Accord enshrined $100 billion as the target for north-south climate finance flows by 2020. Earlier this month, the U.N. high-level Advisory Group on climate change Financing (AGF) issued its final report on how to get there. My colleague Miriam Chaum and I tried to summarize the 80-page report in 1000 words: The main... [read more]

Cancun and Beyond: Financing the Energy Future

September 27, 2010 by David Hone
with 942 views
2

Pick up almost any article on climate change today and it won’t be too long before your attention is turned towards the subject of financing. The Copenhagen Accord sets the ambition of $100 billion per annum in climate financing for developing countries by 2020. But what exactly will be the target of such financing, what will it pay for and how might it be raised? Developed country national budgets are probably not the place to start given the deep deficits and consequent desire to enact spending cuts. Rather, the action needs to be in the carbon markets. [read more]

Cooperative Effort is Required to Build Large New Nuclear Power Plants and Allow Those Projects to Create Jobs

September 5, 2010 by Rod Adams
with 1,262 views
2

One of the bludgeons that the organized opposition uses to discourage new nuclear power plant construction is the charge that the if the effort was really worth it, "Wall Street" would be financing the plants. That charge presupposes the notion that only the bankers on Wall Street have the smarts to run numbers and make prudent... [read more]

JP Morgan Chase’s coal problem

May 4, 2010 by Marc Gunther
with 550 views
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Do we really want to keep blasting the tops off mountains, destroying forests and dumping the rubble into waterways, in order to extract and burn coal that is messing up the climate? For now, the answer to that question is yes, despite vigorous efforts by environmentalists and activists in Appalachia to stop mountaintop removal mining.... [read more]

TD Bank says “us too” on green energy financing

April 14, 2010 by Tyler Hamilton
with 633 views
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Just a week after CIBC said it was forming an investment team at the bank to explore all aspect of green energy and clean technology financing, TD Bank is saying: us, too! Now, I predicted the CIBC announcement would encourage other major Canadian banks to follow, but TD’s effort is rather half-hearted. The company put out a press... [read more]

Clean Energy, Guaranteed: Why Nuclear Energy Is Worth the Cost

March 29, 2010 by Will Marshall
with 359 views
15

One of the most frequent criticisms made against nuclear energy by its critics is its cost. Opponents of nuclear energy – many of them on the progressive side of the spectrum – have pointed to the tremendous expense of building reactors as a reason not to pursue nuclear energy at all.  Sure enough, it takes years and billions of... [read more]

Where in the World is Our National RES?

March 11, 2010 by Taylen Peterson
with 296 views
1

Four democratic senators have introduced an initiative urging the Obama administration to suspend a U.S. Treasury grant program formed under the Recovery Act. The program enables renewable energy producers to receive grants in lieu of Investment Tax Credit payments, essentially providing valuable financing up-front rather than over... [read more]

Should we pick up the PACE?

March 11, 2010 by Michael Giberson
with 162 views
0

“PACE” stands for “Property Assessed Clean Energy.”  It is a financing tool through which cities sell bonds and then loan the proceeds to property owners to improve building energy efficiency.  The loans are repaid via a dedicated taxing mechanism.  A Milken Institute event on PACE financing described it in more detail:... [read more]

Protecting Taxpayers from a Financial Meltdown - Calculating the Credit Subsidy Fee on a Loan Guarantee for a New Nuclear Reactor

March 9, 2010 by Joseph Romm
with 202 views
4

A few weeks ago, Obama tripled the budget for the nuclear loan guarantee program,  though there hasn’t been a single promising application in two years.   CAP Policy Analyst Richard W. Caperton explains what that risky move means for American taxpayers in this repost. President Obama has made two major announcements in... [read more]

Paying for nuclear power

March 2, 2010 by Lou Grinzo
with 160 views
4

Nuclear projects face financial obstacles (emphasis added): Hopes for a nuclear revival, fanned by fears of global warming and a changing political climate in Washington, are running into new obstacles over a key element — money. A new approach for easing the cost of new multibillion-dollar reactors, which can take years to complete,... [read more]