Scaling Clean

Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm kicks off the TED2013 conference with "a very American question with worldwide implications: How do we make more jobs?" The answer: by "empowering states to create jobs through a Clean Energy Jobs Race to the Top."

In this video from the ACORE policy forum held in Washington, DC last Wednesday (see here for a summary of the event), Ethan Zindler, Head of Policy Analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance; and Nancy Pfund, Managing Partner at DBL Investors provided "The Facts, the Real Facts, and Nothing but the Facts!" on clean energy. What are those "real facts?" As ACORE puts it:

In this video from the ACORE policy forum held in Washington, DC last Wednesday (see here for a summary of the event), ACORE President Dennis McGinn (USN-Retired) summed up the day's proceedings. These were McGinn's main conclusions:

In this video from the ACORE policy forum held in Washington, DC last Wednesday (see here for a summary of the event), Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stresses the importance of pushing ahead aggressively on clean energy, so that we’re not hostage to foreign oil or the realities of climate change. Salazar points to the enormous potential of both onshore and offshore renewable energy in the United States, as well as great progress made the past four years, and stressed the need to upgrade our country’s transmission grid, because it’s “stranded energy” unless we can get that wind and solar power from where it’s produced to where it’s demanded. Salazar stressed the importance for the clean energy industry of turning “skeptics” into “believers” by showing the success of actual projects “on the ground.” Finally, Salazar argues that a stable policy environment is crucial to realizing clean energy’s full potential as rapidly as possible.

According to a recent TechCrunch story, "when untruthful information is immediately corrected in a news story," it doesn't fix the effect. In fact, a new study concludes, calling out false information can paradoxically make users “more resistant to factual information." Or, as the TechCrunch article puts it: "The more truth we read, the more we tend to believe strongly held lies."

I had the pleasure yesterday of attending the National Renewable Energy Forum, sponsored by the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE), in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. I "live tweeted" the event at the Scaling Green Twitter feed, and also recommend that you take a look at the Twitter feeds of Greentechmedia reporter Stephen Lacey, Clean Tech Nation author Clint Wilder, and ACORE Vice President Tom Weirich. Finally, I recommend Stephen Lacey's report on how conservative Congressman Steve King strongly supports federal assistance to renewable energy.