The U.S. EPA has just announced that is is allocating an additional $16 million in funding for projects to reclaim brownfields, which are former industrial sites with varying degrees of contamination.  The funds are targeted to brownfields projects that create new green jobs in nearby communities.

So far, the EPA’s brownfields/green jobs program has provided more than $96 million in revolving loans and grants to dozens of projects, which in turn has leveraged more than $2.5 billion in reclamation and redevelopment investments.  The EPA estimates that the program has created almost 6500 new jobs relating to site remediation, construction, and redevelopment.

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What a difference a year makes.  In the spring of 2009, Governor Rick Perry famously suggested that Texas could secede from the United States, and he rejected federal money meant to recharge the state’s unemployment fund.  Fast forward to this summer, and the state’s capital city Austin is busy installing high efficiency fluorescent light bulbs at its Palmer Event Center as part of a $7.5 million municipal energy efficiency project funded by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The federally funded Palmer project alone is expected to save Austin taxpayers $21,501 annually in energy costs.  That’s just one of seven municipal facilities that will be retrofitted with new energy efficient light bulbs funded by the federal Recovery Act within the next few weeks, with as many as 16 other buildings slated for other efficiency upgrades.

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There are a lot of ways you can throw the blame after the horrible death of a comprehensive climate change and clean energy bill, and the seeming death of a national Renewable Energy Standard (RES).

You can blame:

• the Republican party and a broken Senate
• the media
• immoral billionaires
• Obama
• environmentalists
• a handful of Democratic senators (see below)
• the public
• greed and cowardice
• and probably more

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In a daring display of green chutzpah, a hair care products company called Zotos International, Inc. has seemingly come out of nowhere to grab the title of biggest wind energy generator of any U.S. manufacturer.  The company has just won approval install a $7 million, 3.3 megawatt wind power project for its facility in Geneva, New York.  The American Wind Energy Association has said that the project is the largest of its kind in the U.S.

The project went through with significant help from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which chipped in about 30% of the cost of the project.  Also helping to win approval from Geneva officials was the company’s commitment to donate the equivalent of 5% of the wind power back to the city.  It’s all part of Zotos’s plan to achieve 100% renewable energy at the facility by 2011.

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It gets mom and pop out of the oil drilling business, and that is a good thing.

While undeveloped countries might have kids slaving over the kitchen fire melting electronics to mine them for lead – in a supposedly developed nation like this, competence should be a sine qua non in the drilling business, for all of our sakes. It is amazing that just about anyone is allowed to drill – even if they have absolutely no way to clean up a mess like just happened in the Gulf.

While it is no climate – clean energy bill as hoped, the spill bill is not bad for a straight environmental pollution prevention bill that cracks down on the lax oil and gas drilling practices that led to the catastrophic spill in the Gulf, and ongoing drilling disasters on land. (more…)

I just wrote about the struggles of getting a Republican to support anything regarding clean energy in my post on PACE’s chances of getting into the upcoming energy bill. So, I won’t write at length about that again.

But there’s still a struggle going on for another biggie that some of us are hoping a near-miracle will save (and this one has at least one Republican behind it) — a national Renewable Energy Standard (RES). Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called it dead immediately after calling a “comprehensive” climate change and clean energy bill dead, nearly half of Senate Democrats are putting the pressure on Reid to bring it back.

What are the chances?

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It is really quite sad what Republicans have done to the Senate and what they are doing to the country and the world as a result. Even conservatives Dick Schmalensee, who served on President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Jonathan Kay are calling out their colleagues and friends for their backwards thinking and counter-productive actions (perhaps even better than any non-conservative could).

If one courageous Republican in the Senate wanted to, though, he/she could make a big difference and help turn things around for the highly popular PACE program now. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said that he is willing to add PACE-restoring legislation to a scaled-back energy bill IF he can find a Republican cosponsor to sign onto it.

Why would anyone oppose PACE? Why wouldn’t a Republican step up and be the PACE hero?

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Ucilia Wang says that, if the rise of the solar energy market is written as a fantasy novel, then the makers of copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) are members of a mythical clan from far far away that are reputed to be fierce warriors gather.......

Joseph McCabe, solar industry veteran, often gets the question, “which CIGS company is going to emerge as winner in the race towards high efficiency thin film PVs?” First Solar has set the benchmarks, and newer companies are coming .......

The U.S. Navy is getting serious about solar energy and has just awarded five contracts worth up to $100 million for the design, installation and management of solar arrays at Navy and Marine Corps facilities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. This is by no means the first foray into solar power for the Navy, which was installing solar arrays at least as far back as 2002 and recently installed a solar roof at Pearl Harbor, but it does indicate a significant ramping up in terms of pace and scale.

With our military adopting safe, renewable solar power hand over fist, it will be that much harder on the fossil fuel industry to get the American public to continue accepting coal, oil, and gas resources that are proving to be more dangerous and unreliable than the U.S. can tolerate.  The latest disasters – a new oil spill in coastal Louisiana and an oil spill in Michigan that could be among the worst ever for the Midwest – are just further proof that it’s time to let go of the past and embrace the future.

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