News

Gas prices continue to shoot up in the Sacramento region. The average price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.674, compared to $3.584 a week ago, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.

Germany’s exports would have been €15bn higher last year if its industry had not paid a premium for electricity compared with international competitors, according to an analysis published on Thursday.

A commission of experts appointed by the German parliament has recommended Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to abolish all subsidies for green energy, highlighting mounting opposition to plans to reform instead of scrap the system.

In all but forcing out fossil-fuel firms, California is shedding one of its historic core industries. Not long ago, California was home to a host of top 10 energy firms – ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, Oxy and Chevron; in 1970, oil firms constituted the five largest industrial companies in the state. Now, only Chevron, which has been reducing its headcount in Northern California and is clearly shifting its emphasis to Texas, will remain.

On February 11th, 2014, The Solar Foundation released its first-ever district-level “deep dive” into solar employment in California, Arizona, and Minnesota. The research behind these three seminal reports (linked below) was performed using the same survey-based methods developed for our award-winning National Solar Jobs Census series. In addition to the release of these reports, TSF provided updated estimates of solar employment in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Every major economic sector in the state will need to play an increasing role in this effort. Success will require the creation of new policies in some sectors, and expanding and refining existing policies in others.

Yet taken together, the federal standards effectively cancel out the California standard. Instead of promoting fuel reduction as intended, the California standard allows for the production of less-efficient vehicles, while facilitating a massive transfer of cash via credit trading. It also forms a de facto industrial policy that sends us down a path toward electric vehicles that may or may not be the best technological or environmental choice for the future.

Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers.

With more than 47,000 workers currently employed in the solar industry, California has a strong lead over the No. 2 state, Arizona, which has 8,500 jobs tied to the industry.

Energy experts predict a 50-cent rise in prices over the next few weeks as supplies tighten — an annual event as refineries scale back production for maintenance, California converts to the more expensive summer blend of gasoline, more drivers hit the road and oil-exporting countries boost crude prices to around $100 a barrel.

The changes needed to slash emissions enough to reach the mid-century target will be so great that the state should set an interim goal for about 2030, the California Air Resources Board said in a report released Monday.

Democrats in California needed to pass cap and trade to find out what’s in it. At least that’s the take-away from state Senate president Darrell Steinberg’s epiphany in the Los Angeles Times this week.

The EU’s reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking — jeopardizing Germany’s touted energy revolution in the process.

California energy regulators have proposed a set of sweeping changes to the way most of the state’s residents pay for power. The current system, in which electricity prices are based on the amount used, would be fundamentally altered by 2018, under the proposal issued this week by the California Public Utilities Commission.

Spain has good reason for wanting to take action. It is facing a growing deficit — about $40 billion now — because it has never passed on the true cost of producing energy to its consumers, a problem that has ballooned with the economic crisis. If it does not do something, that deficit will only grow, experts say.