Clean Energy

For years, power companies have watched warily as solar panels have sprouted across the nation’s rooftops. Now, in almost panicked tones, they are fighting hard to slow the spread. Alarmed by what they say has become an existential threat to their business, utility companies are moving to roll back government incentives aimed at promoting solar energy and other renewable sources of power. At stake, the companies say, is nothing less than the future of the American electricity industry.

This study analyzes a plan to convert New York State’s all-purpose energy infrastructure to one derived entirely from wind, water, and sunlight.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers talks in this week’s print edition of the Charlotte Business Journal about allowing commercial subsidiary Duke Energy Renewables to compete with solar developers in North Carolina to sell power to Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress.

In his recent New Republic interview, President Obama said we “need some big technological breakthrough” to tackle climate change. Mr. President — our nation already has the technologies to protect the climate while advancing prosperity. Your National Renewable Energy Laboratory showed just last June how to produce 80 to 90 percent of America’s electricity from proven, reliable and increasingly competitive renewable sources like the sun and wind.

Clean energy has become a dirty word in presidential politics….The candidates’ coolness to renewable energy comes at a time when the domestic supply of traditional energy sources, such as oil and natural gas, is at an all-time high. And yet this failure to make the promise of renewables a keynote in the debate is a huge missed opportunity. In particular, it ignores the dramatic reduction in the cost of photovoltaic solar power worldwide and the considerable benefits to U.S. consumers and the environment.