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“Squeezing additional emissions cuts from factories, power plants and vehicles will be difficult because of population growth, development and increases in driving miles, air quality officials say. But state officials plan to fight smog with some of the same regulations they are relying on to address climate change, including cleaner fuel requirements, renewable electricity mandates and emissions standards to require cleaner trucks and more electric vehicles.”

The gap between the better performance of cars in testing by regulators and the lower fuel economy drivers experience has been widely known. But a wider gap could jeopardize the United States from reaching its targets for reducing carbon emissions, according to the study by researchers at self reported the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge.

A new study released today from UT’s Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy indicates that the gap between government fuel economy estimates and what consumers are reporting has increased for recent model year vehicles.

“Take the fast food industry, for example, an industry that virtually every economic and social policy of the contemporary progressive movement is trying to maim. From the $15-an-hour minimum wage in the industry demanded by New York to the fight against fast food on nutritional grounds by the Broccoli Police and the Nutrition Nannies, to this new NLRB ruling mandating that the employees of franchises be considered for certain regulatory purposes employees of the parent companies, the progressive movement is trying to do to McDonalds and related companies what Bill deBlasio and the taxi lobby want to do to Uber. The net effect of these changes will be to narrow the choices of food that poor people have, to raise the price of the food they have to buy, and to accelerate the automation of the restaurant industry, further reducing the already limited number of jobs open to people with few skills. Progressives will look on the consequences of this disaster and conclude that with urban unemployment higher and the cost of living for the poor rising, we obviously need more food stamps and rent subsidies—and so we must impose heavier taxes on the companies and industries that are still profitable in order to pay for these necessary benefits.”

“If you live here and think California’s public record laws — the public records act, the rules of court, the legislative records act — aren’t twisted knots that let bureaucrats and elected officials keep whatever secrets they want, then you’re not paying attention. “

“Utilities contend that rooftop solar owners — often wealthier homeowners, who can afford the high upfront installation costs — haven’t been paying their fair share of the cost of maintaining power lines, transformers, substations and power plants. . . The expansion of solar, utilities say, means that the costs of grid maintenance are being shifted to traditional customers, who tend to be poor or middle-class families.”

“Things have turned so sour for solar power tower technology that in August, the company behind the only power tower project being proposed for the state of California announced it wants to build the plant using a different technology.”

China is preparing to announce plans to launch a national system to limit greenhouse gases and force industries to purchase pollution credits, Obama administration officials said Thursday.

The administration on Thursday staged a show of force. While the Democratic governor appeared in New York to promote climate change policies at a meeting of the United Nations, the California Air Resources Board convened in Sacramento to consider renewing the state’s low carbon fuel standard, a central part of California’s greenhouse gas reduction program.

It turns out the land’s new owner wasn’t a public agency or a solar developer. It was the Cox family, one of the most prominent in Imperial County. And they got a killer deal on it. The solar company that once eyed the property – known as the Mayflower plot – paid the irrigation district $2.24 million for the land and then handed it over to the family nine days later. . . All of this was facilitated by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, the state’s premier environmental law.

Thanks to a global economic slowdown, the price of oil has plunged 60%—to $40 a barrel from $96 in August 2014. Yet the price of gasoline across the U.S. has fallen by only 25% over the same period. What gives? Multiple and overlapping regulatory barriers prevent refiners from moving to alternative sources of crude and from entering markets to fill supply shortages. The result: a regulatory price premium in every gallon of gas.

In coming years, the new legislation means California’s homes and buildings are expected to use dramatically less electricity and the power grid will increase its share of renewable energy. Brown also hopes to achieve much of what the Legislature rejected through executive orders and regulations. That will mean more electric cars on the road and increased use of biofuels, as part of a far-reaching effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

Men and women are more or less equally likely to have private health insurance, most often through their jobs. But young women are more likely to receive government health care, specifically Medicaid. Poor single mothers are especially likely to be eligible for Medicaid. But not so for men. More than a quarter of young men lack insurance at some ages, even as the overall share of uninsured has dropped to around 10%.

In coming years, the new legislation means California’s homes and buildings are expected to use dramatically less electricity and the power grid will increase its share of renewable energy. Brown also hopes to achieve much of what the Legislature rejected through executive orders and regulations. That will mean more electric cars on the road and increased use of biofuels, as part of a far-reaching effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

One irony is that wildfires diminish the impact of California’s anti-carbon policies. In 2007 environmental scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado at Boulder found that “a severe fire season lasting only one or two months can release as much carbon as the annual emissions from the entire transportation or energy sector of an individual state.” NCAR’s Christine Wiedinmyer estimated that southern California fires that burned for one week produced as much carbon dioxide as a quarter of the state’s monthly fossil-fuel emissions.