Appalachian Institute for Renewable Energy
Pioneering community-owned renewable energy
My home town, Boone, NC, is contemplating some zoning changes that will adversely affect rooftop solar. The proposed changes also reveal a mental model about the town’s priorities. There’s a new wave of political activity forming that will tilt closer to or farther away from sustainability and the town appears to be between a rock
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
Kitty Calhoun will be giving a Zoom presentation for POW (the advocacy organization “Protect our Winters“), and focusing on the state of North Carolina’s abundant and varied outdoor adventure settings, on Oct 29 at 5pm Eastern. This virtual meet-up on Zoom will last 15 minutes and then get to sharing stories, Q&A, and discussion about
NOTE: Kitty Calhoun, the author of this op-ed, is an old friend, rock climbing partner, and fellow Outward Bound rock climbing instructor who went on to become an acclaimed alpinist thanks to her drive, focus, ability to endure, and especially for her minimalist approach to big mountains. Now, decades later, she’s climbing a much bigger
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
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
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
“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
Lately, I’ve heard people say that “Bloomberg is at least good on climate” in rationalizing their lesser-of-the evils hail mary impulses. That may be a fear-based reaction for supporting a plutocrat, but regardless of explanation, the claim is simply false. Joshua Frank’s piece on counterpunch, Bloomberg is a Climate Change Con Man, is a must
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,