As Trump Bows Out, States Set to Fill Void on Climate Change

As President Donald Trump scales down federal efforts to combat climate change, states are ramping up.

California’s Air Resources Board broke with Trump and voted to uphold auto fuel efficiency rules, while Illinois offered a bail out to carbon-free nuclear producers. Iowa and Michigan have moved to increase incentives for renewable energy, and Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan is poised to sign a statewide ban on fracking.

Texas Should Get Its Head in the New Solar Market Game

What would a world powered by clean, low-water energy look like? If you visit Israel’s southern region, you don’t have to imagine.

In 2011, Arava Power in the southern Israeli desert launched a 4.9 MW solar field (enough to power more than 3,000 U.S. homes). Since then nearly 200 times as much capacity — both fields and rooftops — has been installed in the region. By 2025, it’s likely solar will provide 100 percent of daytime electricity, plus excess, along the border with Jordan.

Proposed Texas State Legislation Could Change Renewable Energy

Proposed legislation could end a Texas mandate for the renewable power industry.

The state of Texas leads the nation when it comes to wind power, but Texas lawmakers are asking if it is time to end state support for the renewable power industry.

The bill's sponsor says Texas has far surpassed goals set by the state to lower its carbon emissions.

Texas Senator Seeks to Dismantle What He Helped Create: The Renewable Portfolio Standard

Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) has filed a bill that would eliminate Texas’ Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) – a policy that has catapulted Texas to world leadership in wind energy and strengthened Texas’ energy diversity. In addition to terminating the RPS at the end of the year, SB 931would make it more difficult to build renewable energy infrastructure. The argument behind the bill is that because Texas has achieved its RPS goals it’s time to move on. Sounds reasonable, right? Well…

No one disputes that Texas has achieved its goal to develop 5,880 MW of renewable energy – and even surpassed its non-binding 2025 target of 10,000 MW. Today, Texas has more than 13,000 MW of renewables online and thousands more in development. I’m sure Fraser will publicly laud the policy. He even deserves to take a big chunk of the credit because of legislation he carried in 2005 (SB 20) that increased the RPS goals.

But this is the wrong time to terminate the RPS, and it’s the wrong time to end CREZ.

Big energy states meet to discuss the future of energy policy

A group of states responsible for almost a third of the domestic energy production have joined forces to assert their rights to manage their own resources and environment.

The Energy Producing States Committee officially launched Thursday in inauspicious fashion, as about two dozen legislators, energy company representatives and government staffers met in a small conference room in a downtown Salt Lake City hotel. During the first of two days of meetings, the members hammered out their mission statement and heard presentations on the future of American fossil fuels, renewable energies and nuclear power.

Renewable energy push in Texas

A pair of state lawmakers have filed the first bills of the 2011 session aimed at keeping Texas at the forefront of renewable energy production. The early pieces of legislation by state Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) and state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez (D-Austin) aim at increasing solar power generation at the household and statewide levels.

Senate Bill 238 by West prohibits property owners’ associations from banning solar energy devices placed on members’ roofs, backyards or patios. The change in the law does not affect solar energy devices anywhere else on the member’s property, or devices that are unlawful or dangerous. The text of SB 238 is also contained within West’s larger SB 142, which contains a gamut of restrictions on and clarifications of the authority of property owners’ associations.

Meanwhile, House Bill 211 by Rodriguez approaches solar power from a macro-level. The bill updates Texas’ Renewable Portfolio Standard, created in 1999 and updated in 2005. Currently, the Legislature has a statewide mandate of producing 5,880 megawatts of renewable energy by 2015 and a target of 10,000 megawatts by 2025.

Texas already has about 9,727 megawatts of wind energy capacity in place, according to the third quarter 2010 market report from the American Wind Energy Association. Additional wind energy capacity in Texas is now limited by electric transmission lines — the state plans to invest $5 billion in transmission lines to help carry wind power.

Rodriguez’s bill does away with the megawatt goals and replaces them with a goal that by 2020, Texas will generate 35 percent of its energy from renewable sources, including 2 percent from solar energy technologies.

Wind power now comprises about 12 percent of the state’s electricity production.

Source: http://ainn.ly/eJ1LhT%20