The Port of Seattle announces new plans to help make Sea-Tac one of the first airports where passengers can fly on planes powered by low-carbon fuels, Our new report assesses the industry's efforts to make such fuels widely available. The short version: we're next in line for takeoff.
"If the world were a bank," a French labor leader said in exasperation during the Paris climate negotiations, "it would have been rescued by now!" In this telebriefing, four Northwest climate action leaders share unfiltered ringside observations on the negotiations' final stages. With KC Golden, labor leader Jeff Johnson, clean tech business leader Tim Miller, and Portland sustainability manager Michael Armstrong.
The Paris Agreement sets the stage for the immediate future of coordinated, international climate action. Much of the actual progress will depend on local and regional action; every Northwest oil terminal abandoned, ton of coal left in ground, and solar panel installed, fuels the ambition of the U.S., Canada, and therefore countries around the world to meet and exceed our carbon-reduction goals.
For the first time ever, all the nations of the world have made a significant commitment to solving the climate crisis. This agreement will not solve the problem alone, but it puts in place a framework of global action that gives us a fighting chance.
Today in Portland, five west coast mayors announced aggressive commitments to aggressive action on both climate change and equity. The announcement comes directly after a Paris gathering of international mayors talking climate change; it also closely follows the groundbreaking climate resolutions passed last month in Portland. Here's the story of how those resolutions came to be.
Seattle is at the leading edge of a great and challenging shift, decoupling transportation from fossil fuel consumption. Electric vehicles will continue to displace gas-powered cars as long as prices drop and charging infrastructure expands to meet the demand. NRG EVgo is part of the push to get 3.3 million EVs on the road by 2025.
Cities (or "sub-nationals," in international climate negotiations-speak) are at the vanguard of where real climate solutions are being implemented around the world. That will remain true in the years ahead, no matter how ambitious an agreement emerges from the COP21 climate talks in Paris this month--local and state governments will be shouldering much of the load of creative carbon emissions reduction, of energy efficiency improvements, and of access to renewable energy.
The Urban Clean Energy Revolution report details the state of play of low-carbon cities and describes a rich array of best practices and examples of urban clean energy innovation and carbon reduction.
Alberta announces carbon tax, all UK coal plants to close by 2025, firms sign up for more than 2 gigawatts of green power so far this year, and more stories of the week in clean energy solutions.