Turkey's Ill-Considered Rush to Coal Undercuts Emissions Progress

By Bruce Rich / On May 9th, 2016
Nearly all future growth in greenhouse gases will come from the world’s emerging economies, and preventing dangerous global warming depends on their reducing emissions growth. Thus it is troubling that Turkey, the world’s 17th largest economy, plans to as much as quadruple coal-fired electric capacity, building as many as 80 new plants by 2030. It could become the world’s third-largest operator of coal plants, after China and India.

The Making of an Energy Ghetto

By Denise Fairchild / On April 2nd, 2015
The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, supported by the Kresge Foundation, is working to promote a holistic understanding of resilience that is grounded in equity and sustainability.
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No One Can Stop Leaking Oil

By Admin / On July 30th, 2013
Katie Valentine and Ryan Koronowski of ThinkProgress uncover what oil companies (and snow) have been keeping secret. A Canadian oil company still hasn’t been able to stop a series leaks from underground wells at a tar sands operation in Cold Lake, Alberta. The first leak was reported on May 20, with three others following in the weeks after — making it at least 10 weeks that oil has been flowing unabated.
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In the Case of Tar Sands Oil - Oils Well, Will Certainly Not End Well

By Dominick A. DellaSala / On August 30th, 2011
Canada’s growing interest in exporting some of the dirtiest crude oil in the world is a threat to not only North America’s wildlife but also a rational energy policy and a stable atmosphere. NASA and climate scientist James Hansen called this project a climate game-changer because burning Alberta “tar sands” oil could raise CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 200 parts per million (ppm), pushing us dangerously away from the 350 ppm safety net that he and other scientists have recommend (we are currently at 390 ppm of CO2 and rising at about 1-2 ppm per year).
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Win-Win for Wind Energy and Wildlife Conservation

By David E. Naugle / On April 26th, 2011
Wind energy offers the potential to reduce carbon emissions while increasing energy independence and bolstering economic development. I am a huge proponent of harnessing wind to power our lives but this form of energy development has a larger land footprint per Gigawatt (GW) than most other forms of energy production, making appropriate siting and mitigation particularly important (Figure 1).
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Load Shedding or Load Sharing?

By R. Edward Grumbine / On September 28th, 2010
During a trip last week to Nepal to attend a workshop on climate change adaptation strategies across the Himalaya, I experienced darkness within darkness for several hours every night. I am not talking about visiting one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, though poverty and political dysfunction are part of the darkness I mean to describe. The dim conditions I am referring to are both figurative and literal; each night Nepal undergoes “load shedding,” the governments preferred euphemism for what I have always known as a power outage.
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The Spirits of the Dead Meet Big Hydropower

By R. Edward Grumbine / On September 7th, 2010
This is the next post in a year-long series written by Ed Grumbine, professor of environmental studies at Prescott College and author of Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River. You don’t need hydroelectric dams, coal-fired power plants, or even solar-cells and wind farms to produce energy for some of the most important tasks that humans engage in. Honoring gods and spirits only requires a bit of paper money, small items of discarded clothing, incense, and a match.

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