There’s an election to win, particularly in wind-rich states like Iowa and Colorado, and so now the Republican standard-bearer has changed his position on allowing the wind energy production tax credit to phase out. The tax break subsidizes wind power by 2.2 cents a kilowatt hour to bring its cost closer to that of conventional [...]

Tim McDonnell has a good, depressing piece on the wind power industry scrambling to extend the production tax credit, and the carnage that will face the industry if they fail. This has been turned into an electoral issue because of the prominence of the industry in swing states like Iowa and Colorado, and because Mitt [...]

The Commerce Department imposed slightly lower but still robust tariffs on Chinese solar panels, alleging that subsidies undercut US prices and violate international trade laws. The Commerce Department issued its final ruling Wednesday in a long-simmering trade dispute with China, imposing tariffs ranging from about 24 to nearly 36 percent on most solar panels imported [...]

One of the highlights of the stimulus package, according to Michael Grunwald’s book The New New Deal, was the $90 billion in investment in green energy. This kick-started a moribund industry and more than doubled the output of renewables as a percentage of overall energy. What it did not do is secure the place of [...]

I just started Michael Grunwald’s The New New Deal yesterday (I will probably have quite a bit to say on it as it goes along), and the opening covers the only new federal agency organized under the Recovery Act, ARPA-E. This is the Energy Department’s answer to DARPA, a research and development agency dedicated to [...]

Mitt Romney released an energy plan yesterday that some outlets report sets a goal of energy independence by 2020. That’s not quite right. The goal expressed here is “North American energy independence” by 2020, and when you consider that one of our biggest if not our biggest energy trading partner is Canada, and that Mexico [...]

The biggest power failure in the history of the world is happening in India at the moment, affecting a whopping 600 million people, over half of the country. A blackout on Monday was thought to be fixed on Tuesday, but ended up metastasizing and growing throughout the day. While the numbers sound massive, keep in [...]

The political system is so biased toward taxes that you could be forgiven for thinking that the only expiring measure at the end of the year worth our collective concern is the fight over the Bush tax cuts. That’s not the case, as I’ve shown in discussing the trigger cuts and the payroll tax situation [...]

Neoliberals and conservatives will get to trot out their favorite phrase, “trade war.” And to be sure, there’s a jobs vs. environment question to be asked about this latest move by the Obama Administration. But the Commerce Department has moved ahead with slapping high tariffs on Chinese solar panels: The United States on Thursday announced [...]

Perhaps showing concern about the softening economic forecasts of recent months, President Obama has provided a to-do list for Congress that would, in his words, “create jobs and help restore middle class security.” The to-do list includes several ideas from the American Jobs Act and subsequent legislation proposals announced in recent months. They include: 1) [...]

A Cross-Post from DeSmogBlog The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as covered previously by DeSmogBlog, is the “Trojan Horse” behind mandating that climate change denial (“skepticism,” or “balance,” in its words) be taught in K-12 classrooms. Well, ALEC is at it again, it appears. Facing an IRS complaint filed by Common Cause, one of the leading advocacy groups working to [...]