Posts by author:
If there ever was an event for our time, it is the Solar Decathlon (original post w/video) on the National Mall in Washington DC, the fourth one of which just concluded. Begun in 2002, with support from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and BP Solar, the Solar Decathlon [...]
{ 0 comments }
Last week I had the honor and privilege of attending the invitation-only 5th Clinton Global Initiative in New York City (video). No event in history brings together so many current and former heads of state, non-government organization heads, international development professionals, corporate CEOs, investment bankers, Nobel prize winners, foundation executives, philanthropists, peace makers, energy leaders, [...]
{ 0 comments }
The idea is great, and it works, but the name is terrible. It came out of Germany in English translation. We should call it “clean energy purchase” or “solar buy back” or at least Feed-in Rate, since we pay electric utility rates, not tariffs.
“Feed-in,” of course, refers to homeowners and businesses feeding solar electricity into [...]
{ 1 comment }
Utopias have always had a place in the American vision, from William Penn’s “Sylvania,” to Robert Owen’s New Harmony, to the Oneida and Shaker communities and the Amana Colonies, right up to The Farm, in Tennessee founded in 1971 by back-to-the land hippies.
In 1975, I bought a copy of “New World Utopias”, a photographic chronicle [...]
{ 1 comment }
In 2004 I read an article in Mother Jones Magazine by Bill McKibben, one of America’s foremost environmental authors (”The End of Nature,” “Deep Economy”), entitled “One Roof At A Time.” The piece detailed how solar power was “edging into the mainstream” because, with little help from government, people were putting solarelectric systems on their [...]
{ 0 comments }
Solar electricity may seem like a gift from the Gods, but in fact it was an invention of man (perhaps God inspired), and it is not new. The photovoltaic (PV) effect was discovered in 18th century France, promoted by Germany’s Werner von Siemens, and developed as a workable product by our own Bell Labs in [...]
{ 3 comments }
Recently, Greenpeace did more to help stop climate change than all the heads of state gathered in Italy at the G8 summit. While Greenpeace USA executed a daring banner drop on Mt. Rushmore (video), the Group of Eight failed in their negotiations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and instead only produced more hot air on [...]
{ 0 comments }
Thirty years ago, when I was handling PR at the newly-formed Office of Energy Conservation and Solar Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, we released a TV public service announcement called “Master of the Sun (video).” It featured a Ponca Indian poet high on a Colorado mountain talking with his young son: “Since the [...]
{ 0 comments }
follow on Twitter