cgdev.org - by Todd Moss and Madeleine Gleave - February 18, 2014

1.     Energy poverty is an endemic and crippling problem; nearly 600 million people in Africa live without access to any power, which also means no access to safer and healthier electric cooking and heating, powered health centers and refrigerated medicines, light to study at night, or electricity to run a business.  Here’s the situation in the 6 countries chosen to be part of President Obama’s Power Africa Initiative, home to nearly 1/3 of the continent’s population:

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Image: A 1.6 MW wind turbine installed at Mount Wachusett Community College. (Photo credit: Mount Wachusett Community College)

nesea.org - February 17th 2015 - Karl Rabago

For more than 100 years, taxpayers, ratepayers, investors, and policymakers have supported the growth and operations of the electric utility industry. The ratemaking formula, under which capital investment is recovered and healthy profits are guaranteed, has helped make electric service in the United States nearly universal and relatively cheap. For much of the last century, the model leveraged increasing economies of scale to enable the provision of electricity as well as profits and dividends.

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Image: Polling results as a graph.

cleantechnica.com - January 23rd 2015 - Joshua S. Hill

The US Natural Resources Defense Council has released the results of a new “bipartisan” poll of five key states that sought “Views on Environmental Regulations,” which clearly show Americans are not only in favor of existing environmental protections — and in some cases favor tougher enforcement — but also support President Obama’s climate and clean energy initiatives.

The polling results are labelled as “bipartisan” due to the combined efforts of Democratic pollsters Hart Research Associates, and Republican polling firm American Viewpoint.

Together, the two firms — which conducted a survey of 2016 likely voters in Colorado, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, and Virginia — found that “there is no appetite” for the “weakening of environmental regulations,” adding that “most respondents in these states believe that enforcement of environmental regulations is not tough enough.”