Energy Resources & Access

Today is a hot day in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is 100 degrees F in Palo Alto. At the beach it is in the 80s, and about 50 miles inland it’s hitting 110. In San Francisco, it’s 90. If the fog comes in tomorrow the beach temperatures will drop into the 60s, while staying in the 100s inland. Even in one area, the difference in temperature from a southern exposed slope to a northern exposed slope could be 15 degrees or greater.

"I spend a lot of time in the woods, and I'm not concerned that what we're seeing this year is particularly unusual," said Frank Lowenstein, deputy director of the New England Forestry Foundation. Lowenstein, who is also a member of the Environmental Studies Department at Brandeis University, said shifting climate patterns is only one part of what causes trees to change early. "We are definitely seeing weather patterns shifting in the Northeast," Lowenstein said. "We're getting more rainfall, specifically heavy rainfall."

In a bid to cement his legacy as a champion of the environment, President Obama’s administration recently unveiled regulations aimed at tackling climate change by fostering our use of clean, renewable energy. While we applaud the federal government for taking a stand on one of the most important issues of our time, we believe the most pressing issue of climate change is economic.

Climate change could initially benefit rich countries while damaging the economies of poor nations. That’s the conclusion of a new way of modelling its impact, which challenges earlier forecasts. Previous methods of estimating the economic effects of climate change usually looked at how individual sectors like agriculture or tourism would be affected, then added them all up to give the net effect on each country’s economy.

Can West Virginia comply with President Obama’s Clean Power Plan? And if so, at what cost? Those are the questions Randy Huffman is trying to answer. Huffman is Secretary of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. ... Is it even possible for West Virginia to comply? Environmental consultant Evan Hansen of Downstream Strategies says yes. He issued a report recommending an “All of the above” approach – less coal-fired power, more renewables, and increased energy efficiency.

It’s a renewable energy source, but hydropower has its pitfalls. Its dams can kill fish and other marine life and majorly disrupt habitat, and they can also end up emitting significant amounts of greenhouse gases — a side effect that many of hydro’s fellow renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, don’t share.

Doctoral student Baran Arslan experienced bioproducts production processes this summer that he formerly had only seen in the lab on the nano scale. He participated in a new summer course through Washington State University Tri-Cities that created a bioproduct from start to finish, covering topics from fermentation and pyrolysis of biomaterials to process controls and industrial maintenance. ...

When the Valley fire erupted Saturday afternoon in Lake County, it quickly became clear firefighters weren't going to be able to keep up. As officials evacuated homes in its path, the blaze would jump ahead of them, threatening more structures before firefighters could advance. "Ashes, embers would rain down a quarter-, half-mile behind them," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "As fire crews would make progress -- hold the fire -- it would burn right past them."

“There’s a lot of opportunities for states to move quickly and ambitiously, I don’t think they will have a lot of difficulty,” Kevin Kennedy, a deputy director at the US climate initiative at the World Resources Institute told RTCC. Kennedy said reports that the rulings may give states an additional two years to comply gave states time to get their climate plans together to ensure a “robust overall implementation”.