Energy Resources & Access

The nexus between energy poverty and climate change are now momentously driving the aims of international development. Hundreds of international leaders are meeting this week at the United Nation's Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Forum to forge next steps. In this context, decentralized renewable energy (DRE) solutions can bring sustainable electricity access to un-electrified and impoverished

“They need rich countries to step up to provide finance for those deepening actions,” Heather Coleman, a senior climate change official at Oxfam America, which has been heavily involved in talks regarding climate financing under the upcoming Paris agreement, said. “It’s an important point that emerging economies and developing countries should be putting forward in their INDCs — what they can achieve with additional support.” Read more

“If Tesla and other companies can dramatically scale up energy-storage production and lower costs, it could be a game changer for renewables,” said Laura Wisland, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Imagine supplies of clean energy that could be stored in the way we store natural gas in tanks, or water behind dams.” Read more

There is widespread acceptance among the scientific community that human activities are the primary cause of present day climate change. But, how a changing climate impacts ecosystems is still a source of confusion to the public. Some of this confusion is associated with a lack of clear communication among journalists and scientists, particularly when it comes to addressing variability and uncertainty in ecological datasets.

For California to meet its climate goals, we need to rethink the role that water plays as a significant electricity consumer and producer.

By controlling both short-lived climate pollutants and long-lived greenhouse gases we can increase the chances of limiting our global temperature rise to below 2° C, while also supporting sustainable development around the world” says Nexleaf Analytics President, Nithya Ramanathan. Read more

Summary of EPA document: The Analysis of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Data from the FracFocus Chemical Disclosure Registry 1.0 summarizes chemical and water use data from more than 38,000 oil and gas production wells hydraulically fractured between January 1, 2011, and February 28, 2013, and looks at how chemical and water use vary in different locations across the country. Read more

What started as an offhand remark by Lara Hansen (1995) to a funder, about how to use some leftover money from a grant, has become the largest national conference on adaptation to climate change. Actually, it is the only national conference on the topic, which is surprising given adaptation’s importance to humans in coming decades and centuries.

We have a number of Fellows leading in Sonoma County, working to understand the impacts of climate change at a micro level and develop solutions to improve local resiliency to climate change impacts that could be rolled out nationally.