Over the past year, industrialists Charles and David Koch have garnered considerable media attention for their extensive funding of conservative infrastructure. In August of 2010, The New Yorker magazine published an in-depth profile of the brothers, “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.” The article drew considerable attention to their [...]
Post-Vote Update: On Wednesday, April 6, the Senate rejected all 4 amendments to a Small Business Bill (S. 493) that would have blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to control carbon pollution through the Clean Air Act. On Thursday, April 7, the House voted on the “Dirty Air Act,” H.R. 910, which would have done [...]
As the swearing-in ceremonies for the 112th Congress were wrapping up on Capitol Hill yesterday, Tennessee’s Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a long-time foe of clean air and energy laws, was already re-introducing legislation that attempts to block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from implementing their new standards to regulate greenhouse gases from major emitters. Blackburn’s bill [...]
On August 2nd, North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue signed into law HB 1829, an expanded Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and renewable energy tax credit. For the first time, investments in CHP systems are now eligible for North Carolina’s 35% renewable energy tax credit. This new incentive sponsored by Representative Paul Luebke and supported by [...]
Last Friday the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) announced a new vision for its energy portfolio at their August Board meeting. (We will be blogging on this in more detail soon.) TVA CEO Tom Kilgore expressed the hope that TVA will become “one of the nation’s leading providers of low-cost and cleaner energy by 2020″. One [...]
SACE is closely following the issue of coal ash waste, and the proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule to finally regulate the toxic by-product of burning coal. To highlight the importance of this issue and the opportunities to get involved, we are re-publishing our national ally 1Sky’s post on coal ash below. After reading this [...]
Policies that will Help Grow the Industry The past 12 months have been a rough time for the biodiesel industry and some believe much of the biodiesel industry’s problems are self-induced. The industry has been betting that two federal policies, a tax credit (blenders credit) and production requirement (called the Renewable Fuel Standard), would help [...]
SACE is officially certified as “carbon neutral” after working to lower its carbon footprint and offset 100% of its carbon emissions. SACE’s first priority is to invest in office energy efficiency improvements, make healthy travel choices, and to operate extensive recycling programs in our offices to minimize our total carbon impact as much as feasible. [...]
Across the southeast and beyond, we’ve been “enjoying” a pretty crisp cold snap. For my family, it started with a lovely, deep and playful snowfall the weekend before Christmas. That brought the kids outdoors – but the recent colder temperatures made outdoor activities planned for New Year’s a hurried affair. We’ve also been using our [...]
One of the planet’s simplest organisms — algae — may play a significant role in our work to create solutions to global warming. High oil-producing algae can be used to make biodiesel and, at the same time, provide a means for recycling waste carbon from fossil fuel combustion. To learn more, I recently attended a [...]
