By David Daddio on Comments Off on The Illusive Dream of Modern American Rail
The United States system of high speed and intercity railroads is way behind when compared to Europe and Asia, where key corridors regularly approach or exceed 200 mph and have average speeds three and sometimes even four times faster than Amtrak. Commentators often compare America’s train systems to that of a developing country. There was a frenzy last April, when President Obama committed $8 billion in stimulus funds to improve the country’s train network and asked Congress for another $5 billion over five years. Unfortunately,this seemingly large influx of cash will do relatively little to increase train performance in most areas.
In a major new announcement, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare also explicitly stating that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat. This conclusion by the EPA has been reached after a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments.
Carbon Offsets are responsible for a huge debate within the environmental and sustainability sectors. Do they help? Are standards adequate to achieve the goal of the scheme? Sould they be banned? This article presents an arguement in support of carbon offsetting, covering the basic theory and issues behind the idea.
California’s biggest utility PG&E is seeking approval from state regulators for a power purchase agreement with Solaren Corp., a Southern California company that has contracted to deliver 200 megawatts of clean, renewable power over a 15 year period, beginning in 2016. Power from out of this world, that is. Solaren says it plans to generate the power using solar panels in earth orbit, then convert it to radio frequency energy for transmission to a receiving station in Fresno County. From there, the energy will be converted to electricity and fed into PG&E’s power grid. UPDATE: The California Public Utilities Commission gave its approval yesterday to the project giving it the green light to proceed.
Morgan O’Donnell reviews the ways she would like to take a proactive role in the environment through work and defines the three categories of jobs that she is interested in pursuing.
The recent announcement of billions of dollars of federal funding for smart grid demonstration projects is of particular interest to people who have been involved in thinking about how modernizing the electric grid can bring new benefits to consumers. Many projects awarded have a dynamic pricing option that gives customers access to an electric rate that varies across each day, and provides incentives to manage peak electric demand; and some projects feature a real-time pricing model based on the wholesale electricity market prices. For these projects to truly benefit consumers, it is essential to think about dynamic pricing from the consumer’s point of view.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $104.7 million in funding for seven new research and testing facilities located in DOE national laboratories. The announced projects will support the development and improvement of clean energy and efficiency technologies that are in the US strategic national interest. The new funding is supporting research in techniques to reduce the cost to manufacture carbon fiber on a large scale; finding ways to improve efficiency and lower costs for car batteries; and for developing net-zero energy building technologies.
President Obama is faced with some of the same challenges former President Eisenhower faced when he was confronted with a patchwork of county and state highways that impeded interstate commerce. History is repeating itself. President Obama’s goal of securing 25 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025 is restricted by state regulators who fail to cooperate on interstate goals. President Eisenhower granted the Bureau of Public Roads authority to plan and place the new, interstate highways and Steinberg is advocating for the Obama administration to extend the same authority to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in order to update the grid.
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