Ohio’s biggest solar project has a buyer

Developer Innergex Renewable Energy has announced that it has signed a power contract with “an investment grade rated U.S. corporation” for the 200 MWac Hillcrest solar project. A solar project with a planned capacity that nearly matches what the state of Ohio has installed to date has a buyer and is moving forward. While it has not been made public exactly who the buyer is, developer Innergex Renewable Energy holds firm...

Column: Limits on wind, solar are hurting Ohio far...

Ohio is an agriculture state. Family farms often span generations. In places like Paulding County, farmland sustains soybeans, corn, hogs, cattle and wheat. In recent years, a new cash crop has taken root alongside this more traditional harvest: clean energy. The agriculture community has turned to solar and wind energy to supplement traditional farm income. Solar arrays can power an energy-intensive hog barn and other...

Positioning for a low-carbon future, utilities rel...

Positioning for a low-carbon future, utilities rely on gas, coal in near term Executives from some of the largest U.S. electric utilities and power providers said they will continue to rely on fossil fuels, including coal, well into the next decade as they position themselves for a low-carbon future. “There’s no question that at certain times of the year, the fossil generation fleet is what carries the...

Carbon Emissions Rise to Highest Level in at Least...

It is a record we do not want. It is a record of political failure. It is a record based on the politics of climate denial. We have crossed another climate threshold that, yet again, signals we are in deep trouble. We are now experiencing levels of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, that the earth has not experienced for three to five million years. We are walking – more like stumbling with stupidity – into the...

South Euclid, OH council considers resolution sett...

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio — City Council heard the first reading Monday (Nov. 25) of a resolution that establishes a goal for the city’s government to use 100 percent clean energy by 2025 and a goal for the community as whole to be doing the same by 2035. The resolution’s language states that 139 U.S. cities, including Cleveland and Cincinnati, have already adopted 100 percent clean energy goals, and six U.S. cities have...

Corporate Leaders to Trump: Withdrawing From the P...

President Trump says fulfilling the country’s commitment to the Paris climate agreement would be bad news for the U.S. economy, but the growing tally of business leaders pledging to take action anyway suggests otherwise. These businesspeople understand that while climate action costs money, climate change costs far more. More than 2,200 businesses and investors have signed on to the “We Are Still In” pledge...

OK Doomer

William Rees has challenged us to accept his “realistic facts” that renewable energy can’t end the climate crisis, and green energy is no substitute for fossil fuels. The only solution he sees is a deliberate contraction, but since “That’s not going to happen!” we face the possibility of global societal collapse. He argues in The Tyee that hundreds of millions of people must be persuaded “to risk wrecking their comfortable...

UN report: Pollution from planned fossil fuel prod...

To protect the climate, most coal, oil, and natural gas must be left in the ground, a recent study reported.   In the 2015 international Paris Climate Agreement, nearly every country [see editor’s note] agreed to try and limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and preferably closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures. Achieving these...

Fast Times for the US Residential Solar Market

Rooftop solar deployments now rival massive utility-scale plants By definition, residential solar is small and utility-scale is very large. But recently, the annual output of the most prolific rooftop solar installers is starting to rival utility-scale plants. Sunrun leads the pack; it is on track to install more than 400 megawatts this year through its in-house crews and installer partners. That puts it on par with, for...

Stop the Ethanol Madness

The mainstay of the Renewable Fuel Standard is an unmistakable social and environmental failure. Why does it persist? The idea of requiring the nation’s gasoline supply to contain a certain amount of renewable biofuel was born in a short-lived doomsday fad of the 1970s. With experts warning that the world was quickly running out of oil, the shocks of ’73 and ’79 led President Jimmy Carter to call for wartime-style rationing...

California Ramps up Fossil Fuel Fight With Ban on ...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed new restrictions on oil exploration in his state yesterday by putting a moratorium on hundreds hydraulic fracturing permits until the projects are reviewed by independent scientists, as the AP reported. His mandate also banned new wells from being drilled using a new method that employs a high-pressure cyclic steaming process. Regulators believe that process led to an oil leak that...

Governor DeWine Announces H2Ohio Water Quality Pla...

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine today unveiled H2Ohio, a comprehensive, data-driven water quality plan to reduce harmful algal blooms, improve wastewater infrastructure, and prevent lead contamination. “We have a moral obligation to preserve and protect our natural resources,” Governor DeWine said during a speech at the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo. “My H2Ohio plan is a dedicated, holistic water quality strategy...

‘Sheer Madness’: Coal Surges in China,...

While most of the world is reducing its dependence on coal-fired power because of the enormous amount of greenhouse gases associated with it, China raised its coal fired capacity over 2018 and half of 2019, according to a new study. Over the 18-month period that ended in June, China bucked the international trend and raised its coal-fired power capacity 42.9 gigawatts (GW), or about 4.5 percent, while connecting new coal...

A new solar heat technology could help solve one o...

Heliogen’s demonstration tower in Lancaster, California.Heliogen It’s pretty clear how we can reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from some sectors of the economy. Electricity, transportation, and buildings, three of the biggest emitters, have a pathway to zero. It won’t be easy, and progress is too slow, but we have a handle on what to do. But there are still big chunks of the economy that don’t have a...

There Are 2,000 Untested Chemicals in Packaged Foo...

A major but largely glossed over report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental and public health nonprofit based in Washington, DC, shows that thousands of untested chemicals (an estimated 2,000, to be exact) are found in conventional packaged foods purchasable in U.S. supermarkets. And yes, all of them are legal. The extensive collection of permissible additives includes several known or suspected...