Business Green

BusinessGreen

Why did the climate bill fail?

With the climate bill officially dead, there’s already a trickle of “who’s to blame and what they should have done differently” pieces. I expect it will soon become a flood.

Most of these pieces will focus in the wrong places. Take Lee Wasserman’s new op-ed, “Four Ways to Kill a Climate Bill,” an instant classic of the genre. Wasserman doesn’t like the way Dems talked about the issue and he doesn’t like the policy framework they put forward, which is of course his right.

U.S. faces climate-driven water shortages

As global warming accelerates, the world will become not only hotter, flatter, and more crowded but also thirsty, according to a new study that finds 70 percent of counties in the United States may face climate change-related risks to their water supplies by 2050.

One-third of U.S. counties may find themselves at “high or extreme risk,” according to the report prepared for the Natural Resources Defense Council by Tetra Tech, a California environmental consulting firm.

“It appears highly likely that climate change could have major impacts on the available precipitation and the sustainability of water withdrawals in future years under the business-as-usual scenario,” the study’s authors conclude.

Can the renewable electricity standard be saved?

At his keynote address to Netroots Nation last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was asked a question I had submitted (thanks, mcjoan!) about a key piece of energy policy: the renewable electricity standard. It’s right at the 30-minute mark in this video:

At 33:00, Reid gets to the point: “Right now, I don’t think I have 60 votes to get that done.” But what he says before that is something I’ve heard from several senators at the conference: it’s about time.

The Inside Story of PACE

How states’ rights issues could play a role in court—and Congress—in the fight for Property Assessed Clean Energy financing

GE’s Aviation Deal: Is This the Future for Silicon Valley?

Naverus was a promising startup. After GE acquisition, the deals flow.

Seven Ways to Save PACE

The retrofit program is under siege, but it can be saved.

Vinod Khosla on Building Carbon-Reduction Capacity

A low-carbon electricity standard (LCES) would serve us better than a cap-and-trade program or renewable energy standard (RES), according to Khosla.

GE Invests, Teams With SynapSense on Data Centers

The weird, unfortunate distance between data centers and office buildings is finally being bridged.

HomeStar, Natural Gas Survive in Trimmed Senate Energy Bill

With 60 votes needed, don’t expect a lot of action on carbon just yet.