Huffington Post: San Diego Adopts Ambitious Plan to Battle Climate Change
San Diego's city council unanimously voted Tuesday to adopt a plan to power the city entirely with renewable energy by 2035, joining cities like San Francisco, Paris and Vancouver, Canada, in setting ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next several decades.
Spearheaded by Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who took office last year, San Diego's Climate Action Plan puts the city on track to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. The city is the largest in the U.S. to adopt a 100 percent renewable energy plan. The blueprint also goes beyond California's statewide goal of 50 percent clean energy in the next 15 years.
Bloomberg: Solar, Wind Shares Jump as U.S. Nears Deal on Tax Credits
Shares of U.S. clean-energy companies jumped Tuesday as Congress neared a deal that would revive or extend tax credits for the wind and solar industries.
SunEdison Inc., the world’s biggest renewable-energy developer, rose 13 percent at the close in New York while rooftop solar provider Sunrun Inc. gained 4.3 percent. Wind-farm builder Pattern Energy Group Inc. climbed 4 percent.
While a deal still isn’t certain, Republicans and Democrats are discussing five-year renewals of the two chief clean-energy subsidies in exchange for an end to the 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports, two energy lobbyists familiar with the negotiations told Bloomberg.
Climate Progress: After Paris Climate Agreement, Countries ‘Are Not Going Back,' Says Todd Stern
Speaking just days after the announcement of a historic climate deal in Paris, Todd Stern, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, seemed pretty pleased with the international agreement that came out of the talks. “We got an awful lot of what we wanted,” Stern told ThinkProgress. “When we sat down and read through the agreement, we were sort of shaking our head a little bit.”
Shaking them in disbelief, perhaps, that the deal had shaken out in a way that gave the United States practically everything it wanted, from ambitious five-year review cycles and global goals to a restructuring of the requirements demanded of developed and developing nations.
Arizona Republic: SolarCity Funded Advocacy Group That Targeted Arizona Regulators
SolarCity Corp. confirmed funding a group that has taken actions over the past year to discredit Arizona utility regulators, often related to their decisions about solar power.
The news angered regulators, including Bob Stump, who has been a target of an extensive public-records battle.
The Washington, D.C.-area based Checks and Balances Project took a deep interest in Arizona Corporation Commission members early this year, filing a number of public records requests in an attempt to highlight close relationships between regulators and the companies that they regulate.
Phys.org: Alaskan Permafrost Melting Faster Than Expected
New projections of permafrost change in northern Alaska suggest far-reaching effects will come sooner than expected, scientists reported this week at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
"The temperature of permafrost is rapidly changing," said Vladimir Romanovsky, head of the Permafrost Laboratory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.
"For the last 30 years, the mean annual ground temperature at the top of permafrost on the North Slope has been rising," Romanovsky said. The mean annual ground temperature -- an average of all of the years' highs and lows at the Deadhorse research site -- was 17.6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 8 degrees Celsius) in 1988, and now it's 28.5 F (minus 2 C). Researchers expect the average annual ground temperature to reach 32 F (0 C), the melting point of ice, in many areas.