As more details about the Solyndra bankruptcy and governmental support for the now-defunct solar manufacturer emerge, an important question is going to have to be addressed: What now? Renewable energy is wildly popular in the United States. Indeed, a poll completed in 2009 showed that a whopping 92 percent of Americans supported solar energy. Perhaps [...]
–SACE’s High Risk Energy Choices Organizer, Mandy Hancock, contributed to this blog post. Last month, SACE again participated in the nuclear cost recovery hearings for Progress Energy Florida (PEF) and Florida Power & Light (FPL) at the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) in Tallahassee. This is the third consecutive year that these Florida utilities have [...]
A decade ago this Sunday, our country was irrevocably changed. We have seen the impacts of this tragic day on a number of fronts, but perhaps the most overlooked impression is to our national energy security infrastructure. The catastrophic repercussions of events, which stemmed from the tragedies of September 11th, resonate through our collective conscious and have dramatically shifted the way we operate as a nation.
This is the first in a three part series of blogs examining how natural disasters like hurricanes impact our energy generation. Traditional energy resources (nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas) appeared to earn passing grades for how they weathered Hurricane Irene this past week. In fact, coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear proponents tried to [...]
Note from SACE High Risk Energy Choices program director, Sara Barczak: SACE Intern Jeannie McKinney authored this guest blog. She is working in our Knoxville, TN office on energy efficiency policy. Prior to her internship, she was living in Japan and thus provides a unique perspective on the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster. Jeannie will provide [...]
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy has long been concerned with the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) push to add more nuclear reactors to their energy mix in spite of readily available energy efficiency and renewable energy alternatives. But TVA’s dogged pursuit to complete the nearly forty-year-old, antiquated Bellefonte site in Alabama is a unique and especially [...]
Safety questions post-Fukushima have created a significant amount of uncertainty regarding the future of nuclear power in the US, as other countries such as Germany move to ban nuclear power. Construction costs, liability claims and many other factors that affect the cost of building a nuclear plant remain unclear, yet a number of utilities are [...]
–SACE’s High Risk Energy Choices Organizer, Mandy Hancock, co-authored this blog The people of Japan have long displayed a stoic face and a resilient spirit in a culture that values conformity. In the wake of the dual natural disasters and the still ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, there is an increase in [...]
After four months of dealing with the still ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima-Daiichi facility, disaster stricken Japan is planning a future with less reliance on nuclear power. This week, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced Japan should move toward a nuclear-free energy future. He explained, “We should reduce our dependence in a planned and gradual way, [...]
The ongoing disaster in Japan at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has launched the nuclear debate to the forefront of energy discussions even here in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently launched a 90-day task force to assess the safety of the U.S. nuclear reactor fleet and to determine what measures the [...]
