The majority of people in the United States live within a hundred miles of the nation’s coastline. For those who live at the shore, in some of the country’s most expensive homes, climate change is lapping at their equity with relentless force. Many $trillions of real estate is at increasing risk of being lost to Read More
Category Archives: Center for the New Northwest
Getting High is Energy Intensive
According to an article in the March 8, 2017 edition of Energize Weekly, it takes a formidable amount of energy to get high. Lessons learned from the burgeoning marijuana industry: The paradigm of marijuana legalization across the country will have profound impacts and consequences on power operations and electricity consumption. Following the election of November 2016, Read More
Money For Nothing
‘It’s an incredibly simple idea: universal basic income – a monthly allowance of enough to pay for your basic needs: food, shelter, education.’ The rapid development of technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics may someday soon make large swaths of the human workforce obsolete. There may not be corresponding growth in job opportunities elsewhere Read More
Batteries Technology in Energy Systems
Batteries can play an increasingly important role in energy distribution and storage, particularly in distributed generation systems. However, the emerging market is full of hurdles as well as opportunities. It’s a complex subject that should be examined by everyone with an interest in climate change mitigation and renewable energy. You can read an extensive article Read More
Energy Systems Writ Large
If we want to talk seriously about mitigating climate change, there are going to be a lot of oxen gored. The energy producers, of course, will be up in arms. The utilities, too. Everyone of them wants to do it their way, which doesn’t benefit from distributed generation. That we would expect. Some related industries Read More
Subsidizing Deception
Changing the way we do things is always a challenge. Sizing up the best thing we can do to solve a problem isn’t easy. If we make the right choice and have the solution in mind, the rest should be easy. But, it isn’t. The moment of change is when we bump up – hard Read More
Energy Industry Jobs
“The American solar workforce grew at a historic pace in 2016, a year when one out of every fifty new U.S. jobs was in the solar industry, according to the new National Solar Jobs Census 2016, the seventh annual report on solar employment issued by The Solar Foundation. The National Solar Jobs Census 2016 found that solar industry Read More
Harbinger: Signs of Change
Harbinger. I first heard the word when I was eight or nine. I asked my mother what it meant. “A sign,” she said. “Like the first robin of spring.” In my boyhood home of Colorado, where the winters could be long, the coming of warm weather, the melting of all that snow, was a sign Read More
Politicians
Ah! Politicians! Another election cycle has come and gone. How’d this latest slate of candidates strike you? Who among us has not wanted to wring their neck or spit in their eye? But, hey, let’s be kind: it’s not an easy life they lead. Kissing babies, shaking hands, pretending to care. How’d you like to Read More
Systems
Systems permeate our lives What do they do for your life? What do you do for them? Self-Licking Ice Cream Caught Live. Read About It Now! Systems permeate our lives. They are the connective tissue that hold society together. To a very large degree, they dictate the way we live. As they evolve, change and become more Read More