climate change

Rooftop PV to become mandatory across large parking sites and new buildings by 2020 to help Spanish archipelago become 100% renewable by 2050.

“A comprehensive agenda to combat climate change” unveiled on Tuesday by New York governor Andrew Cuomo, includes the setting of a state-wide energy storage deployment target of 1,500MW by 2025.

President Donald Trump’s executive order that promotes ‘Energy Independence’ and targets Obama’s Clean Power Plan went down a treat with fossil fuel interests, who praised Trump for making good on his promise to preserve coal jobs and avoid “regulatory burdens”. However, environmentalists took a different interpretation; viewing the order as a KO of the previous administration’s entire climate action legacy. Clean energy advocates stood somewhere in the middle, concluding that little will change in the long run.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is officially in legislative hot water after Florida lawmakers introduced a bill to abolish the agency.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry, secretary of energy nominee to head the very department he suggested should be scrapped, said in his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday that he regretted making that recommendation.

Rallying on the steps of the Maryland State House yesterday, clean energy supporters compared governor Hogan’s veto of a bill that would boost renewable energy to the views of the climate sceptic president-elect.

If Trump goes ahead with his threat to scrap the Clean Power Plan, legal action will ensue, according to 15 state attorney generals who penned a letter to the President-elect.

A 24-state coalition led by West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has penned a letter asking president-elect Donald Trump to withdraw the Clean Power Plan.

President-elect Trump has selected several of his cabinet members already, with the common theme being a shared climate scepticism and a kindred affinity for fossil fuels. The energy industry has reacted, with some despairing and others cautiously optimistic.

Saudi Arabia has reiterated its commitment to working towards mitigating the effects of global climate change at the 22nd UN Climate Change Conference in Marrakech.