Will the political change in Washington spell doom for meaningful progress in clean tech? That’s the question being asked by many since the mid-term election swept a Republican majority into power in the House of Representatives.  With deficit reduction as the rallying cry of the legions that have taken half of Capitol Hill, the survival prospects for clean energy legislation (more…)

In an interesting show of how established solar energy has become, on Monday, October 12, the New York-based Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) gave one of its 2010 Innovation Awards to Lakota Solar Enterprises, a renewable energy company owned entirely by Native Americans and located on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

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The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued the Feds this week to reinstate the PACE program.  The PACE program was a component of the Recovery Act, which allowed the upfront costs of property owners’ clean energy and energy efficiency projects to be financed by local governments, and paid back by homeowners as an increase in their (more…)

In August of 2009, the White House announced a stimulus package worth $2.4 billion to move the electric vehicle industry closer to commercialization. The bulk of the money went to companies involved in producing batteries to help speed up the cost reductions that are felt to be necessary to make EVs affordable to most consumers.

Now 14 months later, very little of that money (more…)

At the Paris Motor Show today, electric cars are everywhere.

Chevrolet is showing off the Volt, its plug-in hybrid due in U.S. showrooms this December. (Motown music blared as a Chevy rep told me all about the car’s performance.) Nissan is displaying the Leaf, its all-electric sedan scheduled to roll (more…)

Oregon electric vehicle fleet is getting a boost with the expansion of electric vehicle charging stations. The northwestern metropolitan areas of Portland, Salem, Corvallis and Eugene are playing host to what is deemed the “largest rollout of EV infrastructure in the world” and will include more than a thousand publicly available chargers. (more…)

As you may know, the beginning of October marks the beginning National Energy Awareness Month, a national effort to underscore how central energy is to our national prosperity, security, and environmental well-being. In commemoration of National Energy Awareness Month, the Obama Administration is kicking off a month of (more…)

Even outsiders know that the solar energy industry has experienced huge growth during the past few years. This is particularly true of 2009, where solar energy prospered in spite of a worldwide recession. In the U.S., this prosperity is largely due to the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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The stimulus bill along with the $31B cleantech element focused on grants and loan guarantees through the Department of Energy was passed into law over 18 months ago. About a year ago I wrote about how the cleantech stimulus was not very stimulating to our economy. I suggested at that time that the goals of stimulus and of long-term investment are (more…)

Some people think our economy can run on white collar and service jobs alone, but they are wrong. We can and must make high quality products in America. We are on the verge of a new Industrial Revolution and I believe it will revolve around the greatest untapped opportunity of our time, clean energy. China and Europe see this opportunity and they are already moving (more…)