AIRE’s “solar benefit web calculator” has been updated


Granted it isn’t only for the potential of saving money that we might want to put solar on our home, business, school or place of worship. After all, greenhouse gas emissions are literally killing us. Money is a necessary construct though, if you’re going to install solar. The sunshine is free but it does cost


Cutting Edge Energy Demonstration: The Center at Donaldson Does It Again


I’ve posted many times on the effort of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ at the Center at Donaldson to live their beliefs in integral ecology. Their renewable energy development agenda the past couple years is an institutional model that demonstrates how significant progress can be made with committed leadership (and here) all coordinated by


The Bankruptcy of Fracked Gas: The Chickens Coming Home to Roost


Just a quick little rant here, but it’s worth filing a mention of the goliath of fracked natural gas, Chesapeake Energy bankruptcy. I’m not going to get into the details since the story is everywhere in the financial news. To see how big a deal this is, just search “Chesapeake Energy bankruptcy” and you’ll get


This is wrong! It’s wasteful and unconscionable. Trump Adm. needs to stop wasting our money on dead energy


The smash and grab continues under the cover of coronavirus economic relief. Our illustrious federal government is shooting heroin again. It’s disaster capitalism looting the public kitty in broad daylight and at bewildering speed. A couple headlines picked up in my daily feed from U.S. Energy News should make us very angry: The Trump administration


Tax Credits for Solar, Storage & Electric Vehicles: An Update and Retrospective


Barring a miracle as Utility Dive reported yesterday, congress will not be extending the tax incentives that segments of the solar industry have utilized since 2005. Rather than go into the specifics since you can read the Utility Dive piece if you wish, the main takeaways are that there’s little to no appetite for clean


Multi-tasking apocalypses: Life lessons from the bank teller Buddha


“I can only take one apocalypse at a time.” That’s what the bank teller said to me during a recent trip to the bank when his computer couldn’t manage a simple deposit. As we stood there waiting for this machine to do its work, he alluded, probably only half jokingly, to the possibilities of artificial


Duke Energy on the dole: pays no taxes (but you sure do)


Duke Energy, a government-protected monopoly, not only still isn’t paying it’s fair share, it’s taking away from ordinary, working taxpayers. According to the 2018 update report released a few days ago from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, which does a deep dive into the impacts of the 2017 corporate tax cuts on large,


Don’t believe Duke Energy when it says it wants to set the record straight on SB559 (Take 2)


(This piece is as submitted to the Raleigh News & Observer and unpublished by it. This is a second version of an AIRE blog piece, with this one offering some numbers to go along with the rhetorical critique offered in the first version.) ————————————– By Steve Owen, Ph.D. and Nancy LaPlaca, J.D. A recent News


Distributed Generation vs Monopoly Utilities: WFAE Charlotte Talks


Hat’s off to Mike Collins and WFAE/Charlotte Talks for the debate that aired on Thursday, November 30th. Old foes Jim Warren of NC WARN and Duke Energy PR man Randy Wheeless meet again. Listen or watch the debate here. Fracking, pipelines, hog waste, externalities, profits and “show me the money”…oh my. I will publish a