We’ve complained about nauseous smells in Long Beach coming from the harbor, the cement factories, and the dreaded petroleum refineries for some time. After years of complaints, AQMD is investigating the recurring stench.
The United States is now the only country in the world not committed to the carbon reduction goals announced in Paris at the COP21 climate change summit in 2015. But that doesn’t mean all Americans have abandoned the fight. At the COP23 climate conference in Bonn, Germany, last week, more than 100 people from the
There’s been more than $3.3 billion in insured losses caused by the wildfires in California so far this year, with the figure expected to rise, the California Department of Insurance has revealed. Those figures relate only to the claims reported so far this year, by 15 insurers that are active in California — so, the
California Governor Jerry Brown this week signed an agreement with China’s Minister of Science and Technology that will strengthen ties between the two and increase cooperation on the development of green technology.
One kid decided that he would become an activist to save the oceans. He’s enlisted other kids to clean California’s beaches as a way to make a difference.
A new law will now provide Massachusetts with the third US energy storage mandate. Look for storage legislation to gain favor in the upcoming years. “Irrespective of the eventual target, Massachusetts could become the first non-West Coast state to set forth a storage goal,” said Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage at GTM Research. “It
A new report has been released on how cities and counties in California are fulfilling this state’s AB 2188 requirements to adopt expedited permitting processes for residential solar installations. Specifically, the report shows about 70% of these entities have met minimum provisions. Of note, the AB 2188 Implementation Report assesses adopted ordinances, levels of compliance and new permit
If you are in Los Angeles and are up for some vital community activity and fresh ocean breezes, we received a press release of cleantech highlights being presented next week at the Port of Los Angeles. Details that follow include a series of clean air initiatives, including $26 million for electric vehicles: “Mayor Garcetti and Port of
As reported by UtilityDIVE, California has approved an update to its distributed resource interconnection rules. The updated rules are expected to provide developers with more certainty about cost of bringing projects online, while spurring utilities to develop standardized cost lists for some upgrades. Under the updated rules, utilities would provide DER developers with a cost
Originally published on CleanTechnica.com Habitat for Humanity homes are a remarkable support to families. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E), the leading utility with rooftop solar in the nation, deserves more praise for new support for Habitat for Humanity. In a news release, the utility announced its $1 million commitment to the installation of rooftop solar on
Regardless of location, California state customers are soon expected to have more net metering equal access for rooftop solar. Assembly bill 2339 has passed the State Assembly Utilities & Commerce Committee by a 10-2 vote and now awaits final ratification from the Assembly floor. Essentially, this measure aims to even out the net metering policies
In a boost for clean energy, the US Department of Energy will provide funding for 24 American Indian and Alaska Native communities to deploy clean energy and energy efficiency projects. In today’s press announcement, the DOE outlined plans to invest over $9 million in 16 facility- and community-scale energy projects in 24 tribal communities. This represents a
The recent natural gas well blowout in Aliso Canyon, California, was the largest methane leak in US history, according to new research from the University of California–Davis, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and others. During the period of activity — at least, October 23, 2015, through February 11, 2016 — more than 100,000 tons
Originally published on Solar Love. There seems to be a lot of confusion about how much a home solar power system costs in the year 2015. Solar Power Now says the cost is about $3 per watt, or $15,000 for a 5,000 watt system, which seems to be about the average size for a single-family home. Actually, the
Originally published on EV Obsession. The California electric car now (well, as of January 2015) accounts for 40% of all zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) sales in the US, according to a new analysis from Frost & Sullivan. The new analysis — Strategic Analysis of California Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate — also predicts that, as the next
LucidEnergy, a Portland, Oregon-based startup that launched in 2007, has devised a system to get hydroelectric power from city water supply pipes. A pilot project in Riverside, California is in operation and now a full scale project is beginning with the city of Portland, Oregon. Gregg Semler, president and CEO of LucidEnergy, said his team
Four new 100% electric community shuttle buses have hit the road in the beautiful Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, California. The four electric shuttles are free to the public, thanks to Google, and are equipped with seating for 16 passengers, a wheelchair lift, space for two wheelchairs, Wi-Fi connectivity, and bicycle racks on the outside
Originally published on CleanTechnica. In 1974, a group of San Francisco’s pragmatic idealists, the Food Conspiracy, a grass-roots organization of food-buying clubs committed to buying and distributing wholesale food among themselves, became Other Avenues Worker Cooperative. Its mission is and was “food for the people, not profit.” Other stores expanded out of this group and yet, today,
Dividend Solar has gone and busted out a can of CO2 whoopass with new solar loans that are the lowest on the market. At a 6.5% interest rate, it even beats PACE financing from Sonoma County (7%), which of course is only available in one county in California. Furthermore, rather than just serving a handful of
California solar power plants recently hit a new electricity output record for electricity from utility-scale solar power plants. It hit 4.813 gigawatts of output on August 15 at 12:03pm. The data comes from CAISO, which only tracks utility-scale output. It can’t track behind-the-meter rooftop output, which had the potential to add another 2.6 gigawatts. To put
There are the good wildfires, and there are the bad. Unfortunately, the latter often overwhelm the beneficial ones. We’ll go on with stories from San Diego in a minute—it’s a long story of an actually short time—but here’s a word about the bright side first. Whoopi Goldberg had a thought that’s worth repeating: When you
Last week something rare and extraordinarily positive occurred on American television. Fortunately, through YouTube and 350.org, the rest of the world got to see it too. “Something positive?” a critic questions. “If climate change is as bad as you tree-hugger people claim it is, how can anything about it be positive?” The phenomenon tends to
There are now twice as many Californians walking, biking, or using public transportation on an average day as there were in the year 2000, according to the most recent results from the California Household Travel Survey (CHTS). To be exact, almost 23% of household trips were taken by walking, biking, and public transportation during the
When the hydraulic fracturing measure passed the Los Angeles City Council today, several tweeters posted photos of this meeting (source of the above: Walker Foley on twitter). The City Council of Los Angeles, second-most populous metro in the United States, voted 10-0 today to prohibit hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and other “unconventional” deep-underground drilling methods to produce
A diver in California’s kelp forest. A new study will explore possible radioactive contamination from the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns (Wikimedia Commons/Ed Bierman). Biology professor Steven L. Manley of California State University, Long Beach, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Head of Applied Nuclear Physics Kai Vetter have set up monitoring off the state’s coast throughout
If you’ve ever wondered about the composition of the electricity delivered to your home (most of us have no clue), there’s one quick and easy way to find out. The EPA’s ‘Power Profiler’ tool has apparently been around for at least 2 years, but I only discovered it recently. Although the data used to generate
The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Vehicles program recently released an updated version of its rather comprehensive “backgrounder” on electric vehicles — “how much the technology is growing in the country, the opportunities it presents for consumers and automakers, and the challenges facing its adoption,” to be specific. Also included in the updated backgrounder is
We’re trying to get more solar energy stories going here on Planetsave. To catch readers up, I’m doing a short series on the top 50 solar energy stories of 2013 so far. Learning from the Top 33 EV Stories article I recently published, I’m splitting this one into 5 posts. Otherwise, the page would take forever to load.
We’re trying to get more solar energy stories going here on Planetsave. To catch readers up, I’m doing a short series on the top 50 solar energy stories of 2013 so far. Learning from the Top 33 EV Stories article I recently published, I’m splitting this one into 5 posts. Otherwise, the page would take forever to load.
We’re trying to get more solar energy stories going here on Planetsave. To catch readers up, I’m doing a short series on the top 50 solar energy stories of 2013 so far. Learning from the Top 33 EV Stories article I recently published, I’m splitting this one into 5 posts. Otherwise, the page would take forever to load.
We’re trying to get more solar energy stories going here on Planetsave. To catch readers up, I’m doing a short series on the top 50 solar energy stories of 2013 so far. Learning from the Top 33 EV Stories article I recently published, I’m splitting this one into 5 posts. Otherwise, the page would take forever to load.
We’re trying to get more solar energy stories going here on Planetsave. To catch readers up, I’m doing a short series on the top 50 solar energy stories of 2013 so far. Learning from the Top 33 EV Stories article I recently published, I’m splitting this one into 5 posts. Otherwise, the page would take
Reposting this big news from Solar Love: Herman Trabish of Greentech Media has happened across a pretty interesting find — 97% of new electricity generation capacity in line to be added to the California grid in the second half (2H) of 2012 is from solar power projects. This is according to the California Independent System Operator (the ISO), as
More on Plastic Bags and (Inevitable) Bans From Factory Direct Promos: Will California Become the First State to Officially Ban Single Use Plastic Bags? From ElephantJournal: If You Love Animals, Boycott Plastic Bags. From Yes! Magazine: Plastic State of Mind–A video parody: Why the age-old “paper or plastic?” question shouldn’t be a question at all.
The Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife keeps a fascinating Web page on their site to track the events in the lives of the Imnaha wolf pack. The December 29, 2011 entry says OR-7, a male, entered California. So far the page has not been updated to reflect the death of OR-5, the sister of
Over 1,000 sick or starving sea lion pups have washed up on shores in Southern California since January. This trend has been reported about for months, according to the Marine Mammal Care Center. Some of the pups washing up on shores now are the same ones that were rescued previously. One female pup that was
The American Indians listen to the messages of their dreams, their great-grandchildren and their great-grandmother speaks to them. Akira Kurosawa made a film called Dreams that I have watched more than a dozen times. This film captures the beauty of folk tale dreams with foxes and peach blossoms spirits. In the same film, he captures
Talk of flooding to an Australian these days and you’ll discover just how affected we all were by the 2010–2011 Queensland floods. Nearly forty people lost their lives and $30 billion AUD was racked up in damages. New geologic evidence should similarly concern residents of California according to an article in Scientific American entitled ‘California Megaflood:
For most liberals and progressives, simply hearing or reading about environmental destruction/pollution, the scientific consensus on global warming, the loss of biodiversity and diminishing resources and ‘quality of life’ standards is enough to persuade us to take action to protect the natural environment. But these issues and values — framed in terms of a “moral
[UPDATED – Oct. 15, 27, 2012; see below] The results of a controversial French study on the health effects of GM corn and Roundup-tainted drinking water on rats were released this past Wednesday, triggering a Euro-wide ‘media storm’ in the process. The news is barely making a ripple here in the U.S. The study tested
New research from environmental toxicologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that California condors are exposed to harmful levels of lead regularly. The main source of this being from ingesting lead ammunition. This continual exposure to lead is preventing the condor’s recovery — if it wasn’t for condor recovery programs, this issue
A new study has found that more than one-third of US states in the southern Great Plains could run out of groundwater within the next 30 years. Of course, running out of groundwater is never good, but this could be especially bad news for human populations and especially the US since this is a key
America is blessed with a great diversity of natural and cultural wonders: some of the most amazing archeological, historical, and ecological treasures on Earth. These places are too special for us to allow them to be destroyed by mining, drilling or clear-cutting. They are national treasures for current and future generations to share They should
There is nothing pleasant about a huge road full of cars. No one finds such a place enjoyable except, perhaps, someone in love with traffic or weaving in and out of traffic or some traffic engineers (but even most of them probably don’t love it). Have you ever stood on the side of a
I’ll admit it, I love numbers. And I love bicycling, as you know. So, running across this recent statistic on one of the sites I used to write for, Earth & Industry, brought a little light to my face. Here’s more from Alison Leahy on San Francisco’s bicycle ridership growth: “Urban cycling is on
Yes, we know that methyl iodide, a popular pesticide for use on tomatoes and strawberries, is carcinogenic (meaning it causes cancer). What you may not know is that it seems to have been approved illegally. More from sister site Eat Drink Better: Methyl iodide is one of the worst actors in the Big Ag
I want to start covering clean energy news much more here on Planetsave, but as they say, “so much to do, so little time.” Also, since we cover that extensively on sister site CleanTechnica, I just sort of assume you all can easily pop over there and subscribe to that page for news on this
by May Boeve of 350.org Last week, one of my heroes was profiled in his local paper for helping spearhead a new Transition Town in Sonoma, California. I couldn’t be prouder, since that hero is my dad, Tim Boeve, and Sonoma is the town where I grew up. Sonoma is new to the Transition Town fold, which got its start
