Alan Randall, world renowned environmental economist and the man in charge of my raises for the past eight years, has the honor of being named a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists at the Allied Social Sciences Association meetings yesterday in San Francisco (as a result stellar nomination packet by yours truly if I do say so myself--that's worth at least another 5%, right?). 

In his 'acceptance speech', Alan was g...

Environmental Capital on green jobs:

But it’s not at all clear that the number of jobs created by, say, an expanding solar industry would be greater than the number lost through, say, a shrinking coal-mining industry. Nor is it clear that a green economy would be any better at providing work for the chronically unemployed than our present, “gray” economy has been.

When I presented Jones’s arguments to Robert Stavins, a professor of business and go...

What wildly underfunded climate solution can achieve all of these goals simultaneously:

• Slow global warming by increasing the reflectivity of the Earth (geo-engineering)
• Reduce local temperatures in the hottest cities (adaptation)
• Reduce fossil CO2 emissions (mitigation)
• Save U.S. consumers and businesses billions of dollars in energy costs
• DReduce urban smog and hence cardio-pulmonary disease
• Create more than 100,000 jobs in two years?

The answer is a...

An AP report is generating headlines around the world:

Toyota Motor Corp. is secretly developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy….

According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by ...

Here we stand, just a step from the absolute top of the sphere that is 2009, surrounded by more challenges than we can shake a burned-out incandescent light bulb at. Thanks to all the various sub-challenges in the energy and environmental arenas, which are compounded by happening all at once in addition to our economic woes, international and domestic political idiocy, and the randomness of weather, we’ll certainly be leading “interesting” live...

Legislatures are taking a strong role

Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kentucky are three states which will are grappling with the issue of nuclear energy in 2009. In Missouri, the fate of AmerenUE's proposal for a new nuclear power plant will likely be decided by the state legislature this term. At issue is whether the utility can recover the cost of construction while it is building a new plant. In Oklahoma legislators will look at whether building...

Even with increasing unemployment, the green sector is going strong.

No one knows precisely how many green jobs exist in the U.S. economy. Estimates range from less than 1 million workers to nearly four times that number. What’s clear is clean industries have been growing rapidly without a lot of help from Uncle Sam. Worldwide, investors poured a record $117.2 billion into alternative energy in 2007, according to the London-based research firm Ne...