Energy Resources & Access

Like the tobacco industry in its past, fossil fuel giants have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns to convince us that climate science is not trustworthy. To understand why they would do so, we need to only look at two numbers. The first is $257 billion. This is the profit made in 2014 by Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell and others for extracting, transporting, refining, distributing and trading fossil fuels in the United States and in Canada alone.

A new report by Fellow Evan Hansen's company, Downstream Stratgies, and the WVU College of Law's Center for Energy & Sustainable Development focuses on West Virginia's proposed Clean Power Plan, which sets state-specific standards that would reduce carbon dioxide pollution from existing power plants. The proposed rule provides states flexibility in the design and implementation of state plans and broad discretion in selecting pollution reduction measures and market-based mechanisms to achieve the required reductions.

Laura Bozzi has a chapter on Appalachia coal in the new MIT Press book, "Ending the Fossil Fuel Era". Read more

Innovations in technologies that produce energy (such as solar and wind) have over time brought new mixes of energy into existing networks for distribution. What has lacked is a breakthrough that can deal with intermittency of renewables in that system or the ability to store it when it is generated. Off-grid energy solutions, particularly for the developing world, have for decades been too small and not been able to genuinely get people up the energy ladder as their livelihoods improve. While business models and the technology, particularly solar, have matured, the Holy G