As you may know , the White House is fighting the so-called Murkowski Resolution that would ban the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about this topic a couple of days ago. Today, Organizing for America (OFA) is getting in on the act. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, […]

In a sea of bad, very bad and even worse news on the ecological/energy front, score one for the good guys. Last Friday, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (MDNRE) denied a permit for the Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative, Inc. to build a new coal-fired power plant in Rogers City, Michigan. While the permit was NOT issued, the […]

This is probably going to look like a commercial for the Calera company but I’ll say right off the bat that I have no connection or financial interest in them. What I do have is a scientist’s interest in them. Here’s a statistic that shocked me: cement manufacturing is responsible for 5% of global CO2 emissions and in the U.S., […]

I saw this over at Daily Kos this morning in a piece by Adam Siegel (cross-posted from his most-excellent blog Get Energy Smart! NOW!) and it’s enough to make you spit: LoraxAg lines up $4.5M for clean coal gas plant. [LoraxAg] is rounding up $4.5 million in its first institutional funding, with plans to use coal gasification technology to make […]

This is actually a pretty big development in the discussion of Cap & Trade vs. Carbon Tax to rein in our country’s emissions of greenhouse gases. In a January 11, 2010 editorial in the American Chemical Society’s weekly magazine, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), Editor Rudy Baum has this to say: H.R. 2454, the 1,200-page climate-change and energy legislation passed […]

There seem to be two types of people in the world — those who think this looks totally cool: …and those who do not. Because wind energy sources are, in many cases, found on shorelines (oceans, seas, the Great Lakes, e.g.), finding ways to move the wind turbines out over the horizon has many attractive advantages: visual impact, noise, bird […]

Lots of good news coming out of Michigan this week in the area of electric vehicle manufacture. First, today marks the first day of production for GM’s lithium-ion battery pack at its Brownstown Pack Assembly Plant. “This is an important milestone for GM — and a critical step in bringing the Chevrolet Volt to market,” GM CEO and Chairman Ed […]

Mrs. E and I are putting up our Christmas tree and decorations today so I thought a blog entry on the “greening of Christmas” might be a fun idea. This diary will talk extensively about “Christmas” trees and decorations because the celebration of Christmas is one that most often involves the use of non-standard lighting decorations and trees inside the […]

Those of us that are waiting (not so) patiently for legislative action of one of three “pillars” of the Obama administration’s reform goals (health insurance reform, green energy/climate protection, and education reform) got a bit of seemingly bad news this past week. As Politico, Senators John Kerry and Harry Reid have indicated that work on the climate change bills (yes, […]

Today is the day that Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer will release the Senate version of the so-called Cap-and-Trade bill, their version of the bill Representatives Waxman and Markey got passed in the House earlier this year. And, surprise, surprise (really!), it’s stronger than the House bill. The Washington Post got a sneak peak at a nearly-completed version of […]

Cross-posted at the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. Yesterday was the BIG DAY for Michigan’s “Energy Citizens”! Yes, the giant groundswell of corporately-funded astroturf outrage at climate change legislation that would put a serious hurt on the profit statements of Big Oil concerns found its way into Livonia, Michigan. It was going to be big. At least that’s what […]