In This Issue:

A Municipal View of Cap and Trade

While at the federal level, climate change policy remains stalled as a result of partisan and ideological differences, state and local governments across the United States continue to advance legislation and policy study with the goal of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases read more...

CPUC 2010-12 Energy Efficiency PGC Programs

Local governments and others are ramping up their 2010-12 energy efficiency programs. In addition to programs that result in direct energy savings (resource programs), this year the CPUC directed the utilities to fund local government activities to implement the read more...

Statewide Local Government Energy Efficiency Best Practices Coordinator

The September 2009 CPUC Decision on 2010-12 Energy Efficiency Public Goods Charge Programs included a new position to facilitate a statewide focus both in gathering exemplary policies and practices, and tracking progress on a statewide level on government read more...

Berkeley’s Green Scorecard: Measuring what Matters

Acting on the principle that what gets measured gets managed, the City of Berkeley recently launched an interactive web-based tool that presents scorecards on local sustainability trends such as annual energy use, solar installations, waste disposal, and tree planting read more...

NRDC Whitepaper: California Restores Its Energy Effiency Leadership

The Natural Resources Defense Council released a white paper in March describing how California restored its leadership on energy efficiency over the last decade. It found that remarkable advances in California’s energy efficiency programs over read more...

Energy Solutions Wins State Energy Program (SEP) Competition

Energy Solutions, an Oakland, California-based energy consulting firm, was the top-ranked winner of the California Energy Commissions’ (CEC) recent solicitation for municipal and commercial energy efficiency programs. In its February 10, 2010 release of the read more...

NREL Study Shows 20 Percent Wind is Possible by 2024

In January, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS). This unprecedented two-and-a-half year technical study of future high-penetration wind scenarios read more...

Net Energy Metering (NEM) Cost-effectiveness Evaluation

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) hired Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3) to perform an analysis of the costs and benefits of net-energy metering (NEM). NEM is an electricity tariff billing mechanism, and its principal benefit is that it facilitates read more...

CoolCalifornia.org

CoolCalifornia.org is a one-stop-shop for all Californians - packed with quick, easy-to-use and reliable tools that all Californians need to save money and reduce their impact on the climate. The founding partners include State Government Agencies, Universities, and read more...

U.S. EPA’s Portfolio Manager Software

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cost-free, online ENERGY STAR tool, Portfolio Manager, is being used to measure energy performance in over 120,000 buildings across the U.S. The tool can help assess the whole energy use of existing buildings read more...