Energy Resources & Access

Two energy development scenarios were compared for the Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County, West Virginia: (1) mountaintop mining (MTM) of coal, and (2) wind energy plus underground mining of coal. Economic impact computations over the life of each energy development scenario were made on a county basis for output of goods and services, the number of jobs created, and local earnings. Externality costs were assigned monetary values for coal mining and subtracted from earnings.

In support of DFG’s Science Institute initiative, the Fish and Wildlife Strategic Vision and the upcoming strategic vision process, the DFG Climate Science Program is proud to announce the first of its kind lecture series on climate change as it relates to the mission of DFG. The DFG Climate College is designed to cover the fundamentals of climate science and provide tools and resources necessary to empower participants to better incorporate climate change into their professional responsibilities.

The challenges standing in the way of an effective international climate change agreement are many, but the prospects for a meaningful deal may be better now than in the past decade or more. That is the prevailing theme in a new research paper co-authored by Harvard Kennedy School Professors Joseph Aldy and Robert Stavins, published in the August 31 edition of Science.

Whether you look globally or locally, the last several months featured heat, heat and more heat. And by looking at weather station records over the past 60 years, researchers led by renowned NASA scientist Jim Hansen show this is part of a new trend toward much warmer summers.

Syma Ebbin of Groton, a member of the Long Island Sound Assembly, said her group urges the state to start considering climate change when building future infrastructure projects and to update building codes to account for stronger storms. Read the full story

About 1.4 billion people in the world have absolutely no access to electricity at all and even more have extremely unreliable access. Additionally, there are some 30,000 clinics and 60,000 schools around the world that lack access to electricity.

Scientists said that some of the season’s dust storms had been the most intense since the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. They have caused power outages and deadly crashes around the Southwest.

To help utilities address the privacy issue, two research associates at the Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment have developed a model privacy policy. “We identified concerns about privacy as a barrier to smart grid progress,” said Colin Hagan, one of the researchers. “We’ve seen how consumer concern can delay projects or focus attention on them.”